It has been a hot minute since our last update, so let’s catch up! Back in March of this year I managed to finish the first room of the dollhouse, the living room. As previously mentioned, I am NOT an expert, I have NEVER built a dollhouse before and I absolutely SUCK at constructing miniatures…but here we are. 🫠 This project is a “just for fun” adventure, with an end goal of constructing an entire house with furnished rooms, regardless of how it turns out.
The dollhouse living room features gorgeous popsicle stick floors, faux white brick walls, with a somewhat grand staircase leading up to the second floor. Furnished with a green velvet love seat, modern red coffee table (the first piece I ever made…), a gallery wall and every corner adorned with play-dough plants.
We must not forget about my favorite piece thus far: the chandelier. The inspiration behind this piece was one of those gorgeous Moroccan waterfall hanging lights.
A look inside some fails:
1. The OG green velvet couch- while it doesn't look TOO terrible...its because you can't see the back or bottom of it held together with scraps of popsicle stick and globs of hot glue...This was also the time where I learned about dollhouse sizing. It was much too small in comparison, so I had to start over.
A new design layout with actual measurements, and we ended with this instead:
2.Second Fail- The red "coffee table".
I tried my hand at polymer clay and it didn't go so well. It kept getting stuck to everything and ripping apart, and no matter how hard I tried to smooth it out, my fingerprints were alllll over it. I used a craft knife to cut out an "intricate" design for the base, which was much more difficult than I anticipated with shaky hands.
Lets get a close-up....
But I decided to keep this piece as is. It was the first piece of furniture I had ever created and wanted to keep a visible reminder that we all have to start somewhere. Hopefully by the end of this journey, I'll have a really nice piece to compare it to and be able to share my growth with all of you!
3. Not so much a fail, but certainly a learning experience and a cool outcome: The area rugs. One of my main goals with this dollhouse was to not spend a ton of money and try to be as creative as possible with what I have. That certainty has not been 100% possible, but I was able to make these rugs using only a piece of leftover fabric, chipboard & my inkjet printer. I'll leave a tutorial below. It definitely helped add some definition to the rug and you can print any design you want!
Enough fails, lets look at an honorable mention.
My personal decor style is dark and moody. Candlestick holders, ornate gold frames, deep paint colors, cathedral windows, etc. I wanted to incorporate little pieces of that throughout the dollhouse and constructed this piece on a whim. You can still find my fingerprints permanently stamped into the polymer clay, but I managed to pull it all together adorned with a wire wrapped wreath.
Overall, I am content with how the first room turned out. It was constant do-overs, burnt fingers, spilled paint and a craft room that looked like it just went through a catastrophic storm...and I'm sure the construction of the next room will be exactly the same!
Next up: Kitchen!