q is for quandie

I happened to glance over at the cover of Perfect English Farmhouse the other day …

And I couldn’t help thinking that the sofa on the cover of that book was similar to the sofa that I had ordered from The Modern Dollhouse for the living room of the free dollhouse.

It’s not exactly the same, but similar.  Could I replicate the look from that book cover photo using paint?

I started by watering down some Dixie Belle paint in a color called Putty.  I probably ended up with about a 50/50 mix of paint to water.  The extra watery-ness helps the paint soak into the fabric of the sofa.

I taped off the wooden legs, used a brush to apply the watered down Putty to the fabric, and then left it to dry for several hours.  It will take quite a bit longer for this to dry than your typical painted surface.

Next, I dry brushed Dixie Belle’s Ecru over the Putty.  I totally meant to take photos of each step, including this one, but as per usual I got involved in the project and totally forgot about taking pics.

Once the Ecru was dry, I taped off some thin grain sack stripes and then dry brushed those in Dixie Belle’s Barn Red.

After taking the tape off the legs, I applied some Sweet Pickins Dark Oil Wax to them using a small brush, wiping away any excess with an old t-shirt.

Finally, I added some of Dixie Belle’s clear wax over the fabric.

The next step was to add some pillows similar to those in the inspiration pic.  After once again searching miniature fabrics online and not really finding exactly what I wanted, I wondered if I could print my own.

After first accidentally ordered printable canvas which wasn’t going to work at all, I found this cotton printable fabric on Amazon.

Then after an hour or so of scouring the world wide web for the perfect image of the fabric I wanted, I finally found it on a wallpaper site.

I sized the image by pasting it into Excel, and then just clicking and dragging to the size I wanted.  After printing it, and then letting it dry for at least 15 minutes as per the instructions, I peeled off the plastic backing and had the perfect scrap of fabric to make into a throw pillow.

Once again I used Tacky Glue to make the pillow cover, I glued it up with the right sides together leaving an opening at the back.  Then I turned it right side out and filled it with rice which is something new that I tried.  It looks a bit more realistic than using polyfill.  Once the rice was in place, I glued together the opening.

I ended up making just the one pillow.

I may go back and make a couple more down the road.

In fact, I’m actually going to make another sofa too.  I like how this turned out so much that I finally feel like I’ve found the right look for the living room in my first dollhouse.  And I think I found an even better option for my next re-creation of the perfect English sofa …

This one is also from The Modern Dollhouse and is called the White Chesterfield, and its shape is even more suited to copying that inspiration piece.

But what do you think?  Did I meet my goal of copying that perfect English sofa with this first one?

Leave a comment and let me know.  And then come back soon to see the rest of the completed living room in the free-at-the-curb dollhouse!

A few weeks back one of my readers suggested that I check out Temu for miniatures (thank you for that suggestion Sue).

I’d certainly heard of Temu.  Quite a few of the miniaturists that I follow on YouTube get things from Temu.

I’d never really checked them out though, mainly because they have a reputation of being somewhat shady.  The product quality can be hit or miss, it can be difficult to return things, and shipping can take a long time.  Worse yet, their cybersecurity is somewhat questionable and that’s never good when you’re purchasing online with a credit card.  They’ve also been know to copy (a.k.a. steal) designs from other sources, but then the same has been said about Hobby Lobby and even Target.

But their prices are quite low, and I really liked the look of the particular item that Sue had shared with me, so I decided to go ahead and give them a shot.

Here’s what I ordered:

Well … most of it anyway, I’m still waiting on two more pieces (and I placed my order on January 12).

For the most part, I’m happy with the quality of the pieces I’ve received.  The unfinished furniture looks pretty good, just a few rough edges here or there.  But that’s typical of these unfinished pieces.

The little carton of eggs is a tad oversized in scale, plus the color of the eggs is a bit off.

They are a little too orange.  I plan to try giving them a paint job to make them look more realistic.  But I only paid $1.62 for them, so I can’t really complain.

Ironically, I had just ordered a dresser from The Modern Dollhouse before I ordered from the Temu site.  I paid $15 for it, and it did not include knobs.

I only paid $7.74 for a similar dresser from Temu, and I won’t have the additional expense of adding pulls or knobs.  As you can see, the Temu version is going to require a little bit of sanding though, and it’s also slightly larger.

I may also be removing those knobs and replacing them with something better anyway, we’ll see.

I also ordered a set of 20 mini cutting boards for $2.61.

And actually, these are more ‘to scale’ than the set of three that I shared on Tuesday.  As a reminder, I purchased those at Michael’s for $4.

The unfinished coffee table that I purchased from Temu is going in the free-at-the-curb dollhouse.

I’ll share how that turned out with you soon.

Finally there is the item that motivated me to order from Temu in the first place, and that is this chair …

Isn’t that lovely?

I was really hoping it would be the right scale, because the description of it says it’s “1:8 – 1:12” scale.  For reference, Barbie doll sized items are usually 1:6 scale, my dollhouse is 1:12 scale. So it is a tiny bit big, but I think it still works.

Here it is next to the bedroom fireplace in my dollhouse.

The description of the chair on Temu also simply said that it was made out of resin, so I was really hoping it wouldn’t look too ‘plastic’.  I’m guessing that it’s 3D printed and sometimes 3D printed items lack in realism.

However, the cushion is covered in actual fabric, rather than also being made of resin.

Of all the items I ordered at Temu, I paid the most for this chair at $20.10.  But I do rather love it, so that still feels like a bargain.

My one complaint about Temu is that despite going into my account and turning off all notifications other than those related to shipping, I am still getting a barrage of emails from Temu with subject lines that say “ATTENTION REQUIRED!” and “Purchase will be returned as CREDIT!” which makes you think it’s something important that you need to follow up on.  Instead they are just trying to get you to buy more stuff.  So if that’s the kind of thing that is going to bug you, then buyer beware.

Anyway, as you can see I have quite a few miniatures to get painted now!  But first, I’m going to try to escape the cold with a trip to Florida.  Last week we hit a low of -22° F and a ‘feels like’ temp of -45°.  It’s definitely time to head to a warmer climate for a few days, so my sister and I are headed to Florida for 4 days at Disney World followed by a 5 day cruise to the Bahamas.  Well … it’s supposed to be a warmer climate but Florida is expecting their coldest weather in 15 years this weekend including windchills in the 20’s.  What?!  Oh well.  That’s still 65 degrees warmer than our -45°, right?

I do have some blog posts pre-scheduled for the next week or so though, so be sure to stay tuned!

But before I go, how about you?  Have you ever ordered from Temu?  And if so, how was your experience?  Leave a comment and let me know.

You know you are a Minnesotan when it -10° outside, but it’s sunny and there’s no wind, and when you walk outside you say to your husband, ‘it’s not too bad out here’.  True story.

But we’ve definitely been in the deep freeze here lately, which means that it’s the perfect weather for staying indoors and painting small stuff like these cutting boards that I purchased at my local Michael’s store.

I thought that perhaps I could take some of my ideas used on full size cutting boards, like this one for example …

and shrink them down to miniature size.

So after sanding them to remove those rough edges, I painted each one in a different paint color from Dixie Belle.

The colors, from lightest to darkest (left to right), are Ecru, Putty and Truffle.

Then I used my roll of skinny tape to tape off some grain sack stripes on two of the boards.

This tape is only .23 inches wide making it perfect for working on miniatures.  I purchased it at my local Menard’s store, but you can probably also find it online.

  I painted the stripes using a small brush and contrasting paint colors.

Once dry, I sanded the boards again to give them some age, and then added some knob transfers from re.design with prima.

The round cutting board has a rooster from their Farmhouse Delights set (now discontinued, but you can sometimes still find it online).

The transfer on the square board is also from that same set.

The rectangular board was a bit too narrow for most of the knob transfers, so I just trimmed out some wording from one to add to it.

I love how they turned out.

I ended up keeping all three of these for my larger dollhouse.  However, I did order more cutting boards to paint up, but more on that in my next post.

In the meantime, what do you think of these?  Leave a comment and let me know.

I suppose most people would have been inclined to turn the small room in the center of the 2nd floor of the free dollhouse into a bathroom.

And I did consider that possibility.  It’s certainly too small to be a bedroom.

So it could have been a bathroom.  It also could have been a small home office.

But I thought it would be more fun to style it as a dressing room.  Especially when I found this fabulous mirrored armoire at Miniature Crush.

But before we get to that, let’s look at the wallpaper.

This is the French Rose Tapestry wallpaper, also from Miniature Crush.

By the way, as I mentioned in my last post, I have a referral link for Miniature Crush.  Basically if anyone orders something from them using my code, they get 15% off, and I also get 15% off my next order.  So if you’re thinking about ordering something, and don’t mind helping me out (and getting 15% off your own order!), please use this referral code link to set up an account with them.

The flooring in the dressing room is the rest of the sheet of pine wood flooring from Hobby Lobby that you saw in my last post about the Rose Bedroom.

Now, back to that armoire.

I wanted to go for another chippy milk paint finish.  This time I chose Dixie Belle’s Putty as my base layer of color.  Once the Putty was dry, I mixed up some Homestead House milk paint in Soldier Blue.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll have seen me use this color a number of times.  It’s the most beautiful vibrant blue.

And it chipped perfectly over the Putty with the help of some strategically placed clear wax.  I rub the wax over the base color in spots here and there before brushing on the milk paint which encourages chipping in those areas.

Once the milk paint dried, I glued on some hardware, none of which came with the armoire.

The drop pull on the door is from Miniature Crush.  I’d ordered a pair of these for a project last year, and ultimately didn’t end up using them, so I had that on hand already.

Same with the cup pulls on the drawer … except I don’t think I got those at Miniature Crush.  Unfortunately, I’m not sure where I got them.  Also, they were a shiny black plastic to begin with.  I added some Bronze Age metallique wax from redesign with prima to make them match the drop pull.

I wallpapered the inside of the armoire with some scraps left over from doing the walls.

You may also remember that I painted up a couple of miniature dress forms last year.  I kept one of them for myself, and gave away the 2nd one thinking I’d never have a use for it.  But here we are, in need of another dress form.

After all, no dressing room is complete without a dress form, right?  So I ordered another set of 2 from All About Miniatures via Etsy to paint up.

They are made out of molded plastic, and when they arrive they look like this …

After assembling them with some super glue, they are ready for paint.

I started with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Bonding Boss to ensure that my paint would stick to the plastic.  Next I gave them a quick coat of Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean as a base.

Next I used Dixie Belle’s Patina Paint to give an aged metal finish to the ‘cages’ at the bottom of each dress form.  Unfortunately, I had a heck of a time trying to get my camera to focus on those!

But they do look really cool.  I used both the Iron paint and the Bronze paint.  I also used both the green and blue activator sprays.  Rather than spraying that on, I dabbed it on strategically using a small brush.

I followed that up with a coat of Putty on one torso, and Ecru on the other.  Once dry, I dressed up the dress forms with some bits from re.design with prima knob transfers.

Those knob transfers are really coming in handy for miniature work!

As a final step, I applied some of Dixie Belle’s clear wax and then brushed on Dixie Dirt in Earth to add shading here and there.

I’ll be adding the one painted in Ecru to the dressing room.

For one last touch to the room I decided to try my hand at making a miniature hat box.  I simply cut two circles out of paper using a circle cutter left over from my scrapbooking days.  They became the top and bottom of the box.  Then I used one of them as a pattern to cut a few more circles out of foam core board.  I glued them in a stack, glued on the top and bottom paper circle and then cut some strips of paper to wrap around the foam core board to create the sides of my hatbox.

I then glued a skinnier strip of paper around the upper edge to give the illusion that the box has a lid that comes off.  Next up I painted it in Dixie Belle’s Putty, followed by a dry brushed coat of Ecru.  After adding a re.design with prima knob transfer, I applied a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.  I added a little Dixie Dirt to this too.

I had so much fun making the hat box that I decided to make a rectangular box using a similar technique.  I wrapped paper around some foam core board.  This particular paper is from the Tim Holtz Worn Wallpaper Scraps set.  When I saw that little strip at the edge of one that said “Made in England” I just knew I had to use it on something.

I initially arranged the pieces in this room in front of the large window.

That’s the easiest way to see them, but not the most realistic way of arranging them.

I also find it difficult to capture them in a photo when they are up against the wall.

Either way, I hope you like what I’ve done with the dressing room.

Before I leave you, I’ve been sharing how much money I’ve spent on each room in this reno.  I’m not going to count the flooring since I already counted that for the Rose Bedroom.  The wallpaper was $13, the armoire was $19, and the dress form was $9 for a total of $41 for this room.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the dressing room!

Next up in my free-at-the-curb dollhouse makeover is the 2nd bedroom on the upper level.

I chose the Bradbury & Bradbury Peacock & Rose Floral wallpaper from Miniature Crush for this room.  I wanted a floral with a vintage sort of feel, and I think this one did the trick.

Initially I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not the wallpaper would lay smoothly over that horrible OSB (thank you for telling me the name of this stuff Paula!), but it worked beautifully.  I applied it using Mod Podge.

Next I moved on to the flooring.  I started with a sheet of unfinished pine plank flooring from Hobby Lobby.  It was a true test of my measuring capabilities to cut this flooring to fit into both the bedroom and what will be the dressing room next door.  I could have cut each room’s floor separately, but then I would have had a seam right in the front and I wanted to avoid that.

So I was determined to cut a slit into a solid sheet of flooring for the wall between the two rooms, and in the end I did it!

No seam!

After I made sure the flooring would fit into place, I sanded it lightly and then gave it a coat of Sweet Pickins Dark Oil Wax before adhering it in place.

I tested the Oil Wax on a scrap piece of the flooring first, and it was exactly the look I wanted.  It was very easy to just wipe it on with an old t-shirt.

Once dry, I glued the sheet of flooring into place using Gorilla Wood Glue.

Now, for the furnishings.

I purchased an unfinished wardrobe from Miniature Crush first.

By the way, I have a referral link for Miniature Crush.  Basically if anyone orders something from them using my code, they get 15% off, and I also get 15% off my next order.  So if you’re thinking about ordering something, and don’t mind helping me out (and getting 15% off your own order!), please use this referral code link to set up an account with them.

I painted the wardrobe in Dixie Belle’s Secret Path on the inside, and then lined the back with the same wallpaper I used on the walls.

I painted the outside in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.  Once dry, I added a couple of ‘knob transfers’ from re.design with prima.

The wardrobe came with some simple round knobs, but I switched them out for this fun little latch (also from Miniature Crush).

I waited until after I’d glued the latch in place to give the piece a topcoat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax.  After the wax, I used DB’s Dixie Dirt to add a little shading to the wardrobe.

Next up, I ordered this sweet little daybed from The Modern Dollhouse.

I thought I would attempt a chippy milk paint finish on this piece.  I started with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth as a base.  Once dry, I used my fingertip to apply just a tiny bit of Dixie Belle’s clear wax in spots where I wanted to get some chipping.

Then I applied two coats of Sweet Pickins In A Pickle milk paint over the Drop Cloth.  Once that was fully dry, I sanded the piece lightly with 220 grit sandpaper and then added a coat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax over it.

I love how it turned out!

I wasn’t sure if the chipping would look ‘to scale’ on a miniature, but it definitely works on this piece.  I may have to start using a bit more milk paint on my miniatures.

Next came dressing the bed.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have just the right vintage tea towel to use on this one.  I did have a nice plain white linen towel though, so I decided to go ahead with that.

I’ll be keeping an eye out down the road and maybe I’ll find the perfect fabric, but for now the plain white will have to do.  However, I do feel like it’s a bit boring.

As the final touch to this room I decided to add a floral painting to the wall.  I had a gold frame on hand already, and I also have a big selection of downloaded printable art prints that I purchased on Etsy a couple of years ago.  So I simply scaled one of those way down to fit the frame.

I also tried a technique that I’ve seen people use on full sized prints that they printed at home on regular ol’ paper to make them look more like paintings.  You simply brush on some Mod Podge, purposely applying it in different directions to leave brush strokes behind.  Once dry, it gives the illusion that you’re looking at a ‘real’ painting.

You can’t really see the results very well in my photo above, so you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say that this simple little trick really did make it look more like an actual painting.

I hung the painting on the wall next to the wardrobe using Tacky Wax.

With that, I’m calling this room ‘done’, well, let’s say ‘done for now’ because I’m still hoping to find a better option for the bedding.

So, if you’re keeping track, so far I have spent $10 on the kitchen and $38 on the blue bedroom.

For this room, the wallpaper was $14 and the flooring was $7.50 (although it is also shared with the room next door).  The wardrobe was $12 and the day bed was $20.  Everything else was stuff I already had on hand including the gold frame which was left over from my previous dollhouse project.  So, yes, expenses are getting out of hand.  I’m up to $53.50 on this room, yikes!

With that, what do you think?  Leave a comment and let me know.

The shiplap wall that I created in last year’s dollhouse project turned out so nicely …

So I decided to try it again in one of the bedrooms of the free dollhouse.

I have to admit that I’m not quite as happy with the outcome this time around.  I think that’s because I did all three walls.  I should have just stuck with putting shiplap on one feature wall.  I think the shiplap is overwhelming the room a bit.  But then, I would have needed to cover up the OSB texture on the other two walls somehow.

I also left just a tad too much space between my boards this time too.

Things to remember for next time, right?

As for the floor, I printed a miniature rug on printable canvas and then glued it down (you can read more about ways to create your own miniature rug here).

Now, remember my grand plan to not spend money on furnishings for the free dollhouse?

Yeah, that didn’t last.

What can I say?  Instead of painting full sized furniture, I now love painting miniature furniture.  So, I ordered the Diana Vintage Style Bed from The Modern Dollhouse.

That may look familiar because I used the same bed in last year’s dollhouse project.

I started out painting the bed in a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean.  Once dry, I painted over that with two coats of DB’s Drop Cloth. I then sanded the edges to distress back to the darker color underneath.

Next up I pulled out the Vintage Labels I Middy transfer from redesign with prima.  They are the perfect shade of blue to work with that printed rug.

I trimmed out a section of one to fit on the footboard …

as well as the “1897”, which worked perfectly on the headboard.

Next it was time to add some linens.

While working on my dollhouse project last year I discovered that vintage tea towels, napkins or hankies make fantastic miniature bedding.

And I just happened to have a beautiful cutwork tea towel that would work perfectly with the shades of blue in this room.

I often find these linens at garage sales for $1 or so, sometimes even less.  They just aren’t popular these days, which really works in my favor here.

But I also needed some coordinating fabrics to add interest, and I really didn’t have anything on hand that was going to work.  I find that you can’t just use any old patterned fabric when working in miniature.  The scale of the pattern has to be small.  I looked around a bit on line for fabric specifically meant for dollhouses, but what I found was a bit pricey at around $15 (once shipping was added in) for a scrap of fabric.  Since I wanted at least two other patterns, that would have been another outlay of $30 for this bed and that wasn’t going to work with my already blown budget.

Then my friend opK and I did some thrifting last week and I found a pile of fabric remnants for less than $4 for the whole bunch.

How perfect is that?  There were several blue and white patterns in the mix.

I started by covering the mattress with that fabric on the top of the pile.

I basically just wrapped the fabric around the mattress that came with the bed and glued it on the bottom.

I started out using Aleene’s Fabric Fusion, but quickly realized I didn’t like that product for this purpose.  It was too goopy to allow for a fine line of glue, and it took way too long to dry.

So I switched to Aleene’s Super Thick Tacky Glue which worked much better.

I continued with the Tacky Glue for creating all of the rest of the bedding.

After trimming the tea towel to work as a comforter, I used a couple of the left over pieces to create a pillow case.  I also made a sheet for under the comforter that would fold over just at the top using the thrift shop fabric.  I lined that one with some batting to give the finished bed a little more loft, and I trimmed the edge with some edging from the tea towel.

For all of the seams, I simply used the Tacky Glue to glue them with the right sides together, then once the glue was dry I turned them right side out.  I don’t know how well these glued seams would hold up to constant handling, but I use hot glue to attach all of the linens to the bed so they shouldn’t really be handled much.

I just love being able to use these gorgeous vintage linens in this way.  I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more of them when garage sale season starts up again.

As I mentioned in my post about the kitchen, my plan for this free dollhouse is to ‘lightly’ furnish the rooms without spending too much.  Well … I can’t say I’ve stuck to the spending part of that equation, but I am sticking to the ‘lightly furnished’ part.

This way the future owner can dress up the room with any remaining details they choose.

I thought perhaps you guys would be interested in knowing how much I’ve spent on each room so far.  I didn’t share that for the kitchen, but then almost everything I put in the kitchen was either gifted to me, or I already had it on hand.  I did spend $9.99 on the kitchen flooring though.

For this room, the ship lap was $11.  The bed was $23, and my scrap fabric was $4, for a total of $38.  Everything else was stuff I already had on hand including the printed rug materials, the vintage tea towel and the transfers used on the bed.

Have I spent too much?  Probably.  Was it fun?  Absolutely.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the blue bedroom.

  Today I’m sharing the first room I’ve completed in the free dollhouse, but before we get to that let’s take a quick look a the ‘before’ of the interior.

Conveniently, the interior walls and floor pull out as one piece.  That makes it super easy to work on them.

There was just one room in the house that had any pre-existing “decor”, and that was the kitchen.

I think maybe that was contact paper rather than wallpaper, but either way it was pretty easy to pull off.

After giving the interior a good cleaning, I painted over everything with Dixie Belle’s Ecru to create a blank canvas.

Next up, I applied some self-stick subway tile wallpaper to the walls.

I purchased this last year from Itsy Bitsy Mini Store on Etsy.  I was planning to use it in the bathroom of my dollhouse, but ended up not liking the scale of it for that room.  But it was perfect here.

The flooring came from Miniature Crush.

I felt like the white was a bit too bright for me straight out of the package, so I experimented with some options for toning it down a bit.

I tried all three of these products on some scrap pieces.

The DIY Dark & Decrepit Liquid Patina was way too dark  The Sweet Pickins Dark Oil Wax was too oily, it moved around too much on the flooring giving an uneven look.

The Dixie Belle Brown Wax was workable enough without being too slippery, and I was able to apply just enough to tone down the white without it just looking dirty, so that’s what I went with.  I realize that it’s a bit hard to see in photos, so you’ll just have to take my word that it toned that white down just a bit.

My initial plan for the free dollhouse was to simply add wallpaper and flooring to each room, and call it done.  I spent just under $100 for some flooring, wallpaper, supplies to create a ship lap wall in one of the rooms and some wainscoting for one of the rooms.  It added up fast.

 I hope to sell the finished dollhouse in the end, so I didn’t want to sink too much more money into it.  I don’t think I could sell it for enough to recover any additional expenses.

But then I thought about some of the items that I already had on hand, but was unable to find spots for in my own dollhouse, like the patisserie cupboard.

I also have a set of furniture that my friend Amy gave me for Christmas.

So I decided it couldn’t hurt to ‘lightly’ furnish the house with stuff I already had on hand.

I ended up using the sink and stove from the set from Amy.

I gave them both a whole new look by painting them in Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky.

As for that sweet little shelf that you see above the sink …

That was sent to me by one of my readers, Wendy.  She actually sent me several really nice wood pieces that I hope to use more of in future projects.

But for now, that shelf was perfect for this kitchen after I painted it, also in the Midnight Sky.

I think the blue & white china (also a gift from Amy!) was a good addition to this otherwise all black and white kitchen too.

After putting some of the china on the shelf above the sink, and then also filling the cupboard …

I still have a bunch left to use in my own dollhouse (or potentially another future dollhouse project).

One thing I’m still not that good at is getting photos of completed miniature rooms.

I’ll have to keep working on that skill.

But in the meantime, what do you think of the kitchen?  Leave a comment and let me know.

As you know, last winter I refurbished the dollhouse that my dad made for me over 30 years ago.

After re-painting the exterior, I redecorated the interior, one room at a time.

The project kept me busy for pretty much the entire winter and into spring.

If you’re interested in seeing all of the details, go to my “mini’s” category to see those posts.

That project is nearly completed though, so I was feeling rather sad that I wouldn’t have another miniature project to keep me occupied during the long Minnesota winter this year.

Then one day last summer my friend opK texted me to say that there was a dollhouse free at the curb just around the corner from my house.  So I hopped in the car to go check it out.

And here it is.

Whoa, huh?!  It is definitely mustard yellow!

And definitely filthy dirty.

It’s not nearly as detailed (or as large) as my own dollhouse.  However, I’m envisioning something a bit more rustic looking in the end and I’m getting inspiration for that from this fabulous piece that I saw on Instagram from Black Barn Vintage.

Initially I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to get that aged look while still completely covering that mustard color, but I thought I’d see what I could do.

My first step was to thoroughly clean the dollhouse inside and out with hot soapy water.

You’ll probably have noticed that this dollhouse is made out of a weird cheap plywood …

Is this stuff even called plywood?  Or does it have another name?  Either way it has a lot of unappealing texture to it, so I added some of Dixie Belle’s Sea Spray to their Coffee Bean paint and gave the entire exterior a coat of that.  The Sea Spray will add some texture to the paint, which will help tone down the plywood texture.

Once the Coffee Bean was dry, I brought out Dixie Belle’s Crackle.  I thought it might work well to further disguise some of that original texture.

I’ve actually had this product in my supply cupboard for … dare I say … probably 4 years or more, and I’ve never used it.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe because the faux crackle look kind of gives me flashbacks to the “country” decor craze from the 80’s.  Actually, I hear that’s making a comeback, so if you’re into it, Crackle might be the perfect product for you.

Today’s q tip:  you will see the color that is underneath the crackle medium through your final paint color.  I definitely didn’t want to see that original yellow, so that’s why I started with a base coat of Coffee Bean.

OK, so once my Coffee Bean color was fully dry, I applied the crackle medium using an inexpensive brush.  I like the Synthetic Chip Brush from Dixie Belle that costs a mere $1.50 for tasks like this.  I randomly applied the Crackle to the corners, under the eaves and around some of the windows.  I didn’t want the entire thing to crackle, just some crackles here and there, so I didn’t fully coat the entire dollhouse.  I then allowed the crackle medium to dry for 24 hours.

Next up I pulled out my Dixie Belle Ecru paint and brushed it on all three sides of the dollhouse (I left the roof in Coffee Bean) and waited for the magic to happen.

Ta da!

I love those results.  It definitely helps the weird plywood texture look more intentional, sort of like stucco.  I think it gives off a European vibe.  So I decided to lean into that a bit by adding a German stencil to either side of the house.

They actually do have buildings with writing on them in Germany, sort of like this …

I kept mine a little more simple.

I used a stencil that was given to me by Lynne from Ellen J Goods.  It’s from her set of four 8″ German Grain Sack Stencils.  I chose Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage for the stenciling rather than a black or the Coffee Bean (which is a dark brown/black) because I wanted it to look as though it has faded with time.

Next up I used the Ancient Findings mold from re.design with prima and some I.O.D. Air Dry Clay to create a pair of ‘plaster’ medallions for under the peak of the roof on either side.

I painted the medallion in Coffee Bean, followed by Ecru as well.  I didn’t want it to jump out at you, but rather to be a more subtle detail.

I think the Crackle, stencil and medallion all give your eye something else to focus on rather than that plywood texture.

The front door and the window sills are also painted in Coffee Bean.

I considered replacing the door with something with a little more detail, or adding window panes somehow, but all of the openings on this dollhouse are a bit over-sized.  So, I decided to keep it simple and just paint them.

The little brass “42” came from my scrapbook supply stash.  I mail ordered the lights from Hobby Lobby for my dollhouse last year, but they ended up being too large.  I think they work well here though.  They do actually light up if you put a battery in them, but I haven’t quite gotten around to that just yet.

I did doctor them up a bit.  They originally had a shiny black plastic finish that looked pretty cheap.

I painted the black plastic with more of the Coffee Bean, and once dry I added some of the Bronze Age metallique wax from re.design with prima.

So far I am loving how this project is turning out.

I’ve already begun work on the interior, and my plan to not spend more than $100 has completely flown out the window.  But I’m having so much fun!

I hope you’ll stay tuned as I continue to work on this free-at-the-curb dollhouse!