Working on Lily again!

I have a week off work so in between Halloween costumes (I made great Marilyn Manson hair for my boyfriend today!); Murder Mystery costumes (the following Saturday, I'm a Geisha, thankfully a Kimono shouldn't be too hard to make at short notice...) and generally catching up on the housework, I have finally got back down to working on Lily... hurray!

I started work on the floors today; I was lucky in that the wood was good quality and the same colour on each floor so I have decided to stain them with the Sandolin that I used on my decking! It's a natural colour with only a hint of stain and contains restorers and preservatives; as Lily's wood can be quite dry (sitting under a bed for 7 years will do that..) I wanted to try and do it some good as well as decorate.

I'm pleased with the results, the grain has come up beautifully - a coat of varnish and they should shine! I have also decided not to try and create floorboards, something I was very keen on before my dollhouse hiatus. I spent hours researching how to score floorboards, but when I looked closely at the wood before I started to stain, the grain was long and wide (especially on the ground floor) and I think it would have looked odd squeezed into 12 scale floorboards. I will instead concentrate on getting beautiful, shining floors which I think will be just as effective. Now I'm going to finish the rest of the wallpapering; I want to do it all, whilst the walls can be laid flat and the patterns matched as accurately as possible. Then I need to start painting the coving and skirting; again, I think it will be easier to cut and prep for installation before the walls are put together - it's going to be a busy week!

More distractions..

now that Halloween approaches! This year's theme is Alice in Wonderland and anything inspired by it. After lots of thought and general fiddling (I'm not a fan of Alice, never a good place to start), I think I'm going as an interpretation of chapters 1 and 2 :) - all the good bits, the White Rabbit in his rabbit hole, Eat Me/Drink Me, an oversized pocketwatch etc.

I always make my own costumes and they have to have a vintage theme so this year I decided to pintuck the waist of my skirt to give it the volume I need as it's a low skirt which sits on my hips. I fit 4.5m of fabric onto a 36" waistband... lots of pins, lots of pinpricks and lots and lots of fun! I had planned to machine stitch the tucks down but liked them so much that in the end I handstitched each tuck. I'm pleased with the overall result.

I've gone for a "gothic" Alice, taking my inspiration from an advertisement for a art show of work inspired by AIW and Violet's dress from A Series of Unfortunate Events. A pair of black and white stripe tights, Cher-esque wig, beaded necklace (an hour and a half of threading 635 beads!), black net petticoat, 5" White Rabbit and a navy blue Victorian jacket. All I need to do is decorate the skirt and dress my White Rabbit in a waistcoat etc. I found some beautiful black, dotty patterned voile at my local fabric shop, so I'm thinking of appliqueing shapes onto the skirt.

And one day this blog will go back to being about dollhouses!

My Willowcrest arrived!!

I know, I know, I've barely started my Lily and already I've bought another dollhouse, but this one is special. After so many years of looking, I finally own a Willowcrest, it arrived a few days ago and I can barely contain my excitement! Not only is the kit complete, it's in great condition; I couldn't have hoped for anything more. It sits on the floor of my workroom and distracts me from everything else I try to do...

The decorating is done...

...finally! One last room to go - and then it'll be time to tidy up the other rooms and we're already planning new things for the kitchen and bathroom! My favourite part of the hallway is the stairwell, we bought a selection of large white picture frames and hung them pretty much the full height of the wall. They draw your eye upwards and remind you of just how big a space it is. The plan is to fill them with our own photos, which will have to be blown up; the contenders are blu-tacked to the glass at the moment, we all get our vote and I can see it taking a while to decide on which pictures to use!