Category: mini’s

As I like to remind myself all the time, never say never.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve sworn that I will never, ever wallpaper again.  Yet here I am.  Wallpapering.

To be fair though, this time I’m wallpapering in miniature.  First it was the hallway, and now it’s the bathroom.

I found this fabulous mini toile wallpaper at Miniature Crush.  I actually ordered enough of it to wallpaper the main bedroom of the dollhouse, but as you’ve seen, I didn’t actually use it in that room.

On the bright side, ordering too much wallpaper in miniature doesn’t break the bank like it would if it was full sized.  This stuff is only $3.75 per sheet.

To prep for the wallpaper, I first painted the walls, trim and wainscoting in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth to create a blank canvas.

For my first wallpapering attempt, I think I did pretty good.  I’ll admit, I didn’t bother to line up the pattern at the corners.  That was pure laziness on my part, and truth be told I regret it.  It wouldn’t have taken much more effort to line that up, and I certainly had plenty of paper.

I also left a tiny gap in one corner.  Drat!

But, keep in mind, these are close up photos of a very small space.  In real life these flaws aren’t nearly as noticeable.  And once I get the bathroom ‘furnished’ I don’t think they’ll matter at all.

Next up I needed to do something about the floor.  Unfortunately it had been damaged and needed to be replaced.

I did find a very inexpensive flooring option at Hobby Lobby.

That bright white really made the Drop Cloth on the wainscoting look way too creamy though.  And you know me, I’m not a fan of bright whites, I prefer a more subtle white.  So I ordered another option to see if I liked it better.

This flooring is from itsybitsymini.com.  It’s a peel and stick style ‘wallpaper’ with a matte finish.  Therefore it is completely flat (not embossed like the Hobby Lobby flooring), which I think is a bit less realistic looking.  None the less, I prefer the look of this one over the Hobby Lobby floor.

Even with this new flooring,  the Drop Cloth on the wainscoting was still a bit too warm.  So I got out Dixie Belle’s Saltwater Silk paint and painted a test swatch on the wainscoting, but it was way too bright of a white for me.  Then I got out the Fluff from the chalk paint line, still too bright.  Finally, I pulled out the Endless Shore from the Silk paint line, and I decided that was just right.  It’s really just a tiny bit brighter than Drop Cloth, but that was just what I needed.

By the way, I’ve written a blog post comparing the Dixie Belle chalk style whites …

and also another comparing the Silk line whites  …

so check those out if you are wondering how all of these shades of white measure up.

Once I had the paint color and the flooring figured out, I decided that I needed a little something in the area between the wallpaper and the ceiling.  The original bathroom had a wallpaper border there, but I decided to do something a little bit more unique this time around.

I dug through my transfer stash and pulled out the Cosette transfer from I.O.D.

You may remember that I’ve only used the inner circle of text from this transfer (I used it on that Christmas toolbox).

So I still had those lines of text from both the top and bottom of the transfer.  And the 2nd line from the top was just about a perfect fit for the border area of my dollhouse bathroom.

And I absolutely love it there.  It works beautifully with my toile wallpaper and my French Country vibe.

And that brings me to the radiator.  A while back I mentioned that I want to paint the radiator in the q branch (a.k.a. my home office) gold.  Naturally, that will have to wait for summer because I can’t paint it while it’s hot.  But how about a gold radiator for the dollhouse?  That I can do now.

The radiator is plastic, and honestly a little cheap looking up close.  The white plastic had really yellowed over time.

So I gave it a good scrub with hot water and Dawn dish soap.  Once dry I taped off the silver and black piping, and then gave it a quick spray with Rust-Oleum gold spray paint.

Oh my goodness, isn’t that a 100% improvement?

I love it!  It definitely no longer looks plastic.

So, now that I have all of the ‘bones’ in place, next up is furnishing the bathroom and I’ll be sharing that on Friday, so be sure to stay tuned!

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

A while back I shared some dollhouse furniture photos where I used a Gulliver’s Travels book as the background.

I’ve always loved the look of that book’s pages with the title in that large font at the top.  And obviously it’s the perfect choice for the background in pictures of miniatures.

The cover of the book itself is quite beat up and not good for much in the way of either display or to use for staging photos.

Markings inside indicate that this book once belonged to Concordia College …

and also to Harding High School.

It’s actually quite difficult to find pages in the book that don’t have sections underlined or notes in the margins.

In other words, this book was definitely very well used.  I’m pretty sure it has little monetary value, so I don’t feel bad about dismantling it.

One of my readers (hello Monica!) made the suggestion that I use some of those book pages as wallpaper in the dollhouse, but I have to say that I was already thinking along those lines myself.  I just wasn’t sure exactly which room to use them in.

But ultimately I chose the 2nd floor hallway.

I will admit that my application of the somewhat fragile book pages to the walls leaves a little bit to be desired in neatness, but I think it makes up for it in charm.

I cut the pages to fit as well as I could and then applied them using Mod Podge as ‘wallpaper paste’.  I did not add more Mod Podge over the top of the paper like you would if you were decoupaging.  I just used it on the back.

I’ve added a small rug from The Modern Dollhouse to the hallway …

As well as a chair that I painted up.

This is painted in a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Coffee Bean, followed by a dry brushed coat of their Burlap.  I also painted the seat cushion with a wash of Burlap (about 50/50 paint and water).  Then I added a re.design with prima knob transfer of a horse to the seat back.

And that brings me to my tiny books.

I happened across a downloadable file for creating some aged looking books (on Etsy, here), so I decided to try making some.

Once the file was purchased and printed out, I cut out all of the various bits.

To turn these into books I simply cut some heavy cardstock to size, then glued together stacks of the cardstock that would be thick enough to fill the book covers.

Then, I just glued the covers over the stack of cardstock.

That works great for books that you plan to just stack up, or put in a bookcase with the spines showing.

But I also wanted to create some books that would lie open somewhere.

For those, rather than gluing all of the layers of cardstock together, I glued some of the printed inner pages to the inside so the book could be left open.

Initially I thought I would called these finished at this point, but then I decided to add some of Dixie Belle’s Gold Gilding Wax to the edges of the ‘pages’.

To be honest, that’s probably a detail too small to be noticed by most.  But it only took a minute to do, and I already had the Gold wax out for something else that day, so why not?

I have a wall of bookcases to fill in the tower room of my dollhouse, so I think there will be quite a bit more bookmaking in my future.

In the meantime, what do you think of my book page wallpaper and my lilliputian books?  Leave a comment and let me know.

Now that the shiplap is in place, it’s time to furnish the main bedroom.

I’ve mentioned before that my in-laws had misplaced most of the dollhouse’s original contents.  But there was one piece of furniture still in the house, the bed from this room.

And that’s kind of cool because I still like this simple four poster canopy bed (most of the other original furniture is no longer my style).

The bedding however had gone missing.

But that’s OK because I purchased that sewing machine a few months back just so that I could create bedding and such for the dollhouse.

Well, as it turns out, I needn’t have bothered with a sewing machine.  Pretty much all of the tutorials for creating dollhouse bedding that I’ve found just use glue rather than a needle and thread.  Who knew?

I’ve also learned that the common kitchen sponge works well for creating a miniature mattress from watching YouTube videos.

So when I was in the grocery store the other day I picked up a pack of 4 for $1.99.  I didn’t notice that they had curved edges until I got them home.  But that’s OK, they were easy to cut and fit to a piece of cardboard that I was using as the base for my mattress.

After gluing the sponges to the cardboard with Tite Bond Quick and Thick, I then simply cut a piece of fabric with an inch or so extra around all four sides.  I wrapped that extra fabric around and glued it on the bottom using hot glue.

Speaking of fabric, I had a couple of remnants that I wanted to use on this bed.  I’d found a very small piece of brown and cream ticking at Hobby Lobby for .97, and I found some interesting horse hunt toile fabric while thrifting a while back for $2.

So I cut a piece of each of those fabrics to size, glued three edges together with the right side of the fabric facing in, and once the glue was dry I turned it right-side out.  Then I gave it a quick press with the iron to flatten it out a bit, and also folded in the remaining seam and gave it a quick shot with the iron.  Then I just glued that shut.

At this point I will say that I think I achieved a neater looking finish when I actually sewed the seams for the bedding on my previous project v. the glued seams on this one, mainly in the corners.  But technically it did work to glue them.

I placed the coverlet on the bed, folding the top edge over by about an inch so that the ticking striped underside was visible.

I then used hot glue to attach the bedding to each side of the bed itself.

I made a couple of pillows for the bed, also just using glue.  One is just simply made out of the ticking fabric, but for the 2nd one I used a scrap of drop cloth that I stamped using one of the I.O.D. Ephemeral Type stamps.

That one was a bit of an experiment.  I was just playing around trying to figure out how I could incorporate some of those stamps into dollhouse items.  I stamped the drop cloth, rolled it around a piece of foam, glued the edges without turning them in, and then trimmed the glued edges with pinking shears.  Easy peasy.

And that’s the bed done.

Next up, I ordered this armoire from Miniature Crush.

It opens up to reveal shelves.

After giving it a light sanding to smooth out any rough spots, I started by painting the interior in Dixie Belle’s Cottage Door.

Then I lined the back with more of Tim Holtz’ Worn Wallpaper Scraps.

I cut some small bits of fabric from an old piece of bark cloth and an old floral apron that I had in my stash.  Then I just folded them and dabbed some hot glue in each layer to make them lie somewhat flat.

Now, I’m aware that the pink interior doesn’t really work with the overall neutral color scheme in this room, but for the most part this armoire will just sit in place with the doors closed.  So I enjoyed adding a little pop of color inside.  Maybe it’s my secret little homage to the original pink color of the room.

Next up I painted the exterior of the armoire in Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage.  It was originally meant to be an undercoat, because I then put two coats of Drop Cloth over it.

But in the end, I didn’t love the Drop Cloth, so I went back over that with the Dried Sage.

After sanding to distress, I added two bees from one of re.design with prima’s knob transfers to the doors.

After sealing the piece with some of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta, I used a small brush to apply some of the Dixie Belle Earth to the corners of each panel.

This is a powder pigment that you can use to add subtle shading to your painted pieces.

A little goes a long way, especially with miniatures.

But that bit of shading adds a lot of dimension to miniature pieces.

One last quick painting project for this room (for now) was the radiator.

My dad put a few plastic radiators into the dollhouse here and there, although not in every room.  This one was originally in the hallway, but I have another plan for that spot so I moved it into the main bedroom.

But first I painted it with Dixie Belle’s Bronze Patina Paint.  To give it a super realistic look, I dabbed just a tiny bit of the green activating spray onto the bleed valves.

And with that I’m calling the main bedroom ‘furnished for now’.

I salvaged a discarded vintage alarm clock face from my friend opK to hang over the fireplace.

By the way, normally that fireplace insert lights up and looks like it has glowing embers.  Unfortunately, I am now unable to get any of the electrical to work in the dollhouse.  Mr. Q suspects there is a short somewhere, but to fix that would require ripping out floors and/or ceilings to get to the wires, and that’s not going to happen.

So all of the lights are out for now, I’ll save that problem for another day.

The armoire is in place.

I moved the trunk, or blanket chest, from its temporary position in the dining room to the foot of the bed.

I also moved the dress form that I painted up a few months back into this room.

You’ll notice that I don’t have any bedside tables yet.  I have a plan to try and make a stack of miniature suitcases to use on at least one side of the bed, but that project will be a bit down the road.

I also have some battery operated bedside reading lights on order.

I definitely need some artwork for the walls too, but that’s the sort of thing that I can work on over time.

But for now, what do you think of the mostly completed room no. 2 of my dollhouse reno?  Leave a comment and let me know.

I have to be honest, I thought there was a pretty good possibility that I’d get started on my dollhouse renovation and realize that working in miniature was just too fiddly for me.

And then the dollhouse would become one of those projects that gets shoved aside and never finished.

I think that’s partly why I gave it away in the first place.

But I’m beginning to realize that I can do fiddly things, so I decided to tackle adding some shiplap to the dollhouse.

I started by ordering some wood strips from Miniature Crush.  After they arrived, I gave them all a light sanding with 220 grit paper followed by two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.

When creating a faux shiplap wall you intentionally leave a tiny bit of space between each board, you don’t butt them up tightly together.  So you need to be sure that the edges of the boards are painted because it looks obvious if they aren’t.  Therefore, it’s easier to paint the boards before you install them.

Another important step before installing faux shiplap is to paint the wall first.  Because again, it might show through those tiny gaps in the planks of wood.  Especially if your wall has a color on it, or in this case, some floral wallpaper.

That brings me back to the ‘before’ photo of the dollhouse’s main bedroom, which is where I’m putting the shiplap.

Phew!  I really loved some horrible shades of mauve in the 90’s.

Yep, I definitely needed to cover that up first.  So I gave the walls, trim and ceiling two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.

Since I was only going to shiplap one wall, I decided I needed a little bit of contrast between the color on the other walls, the shiplap and all of the trim, so I added just a bit of Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage to some Drop Cloth to darken it up a bit and then added that on just the walls that would remain bare.

Then it was time to install the shiplap so I got out my tiny step ladder and my tiny hammers and got to work.

LOL, OK, the actual tool I used was one of these.

This is called a multi angle miter shear cutter, and it worked beautifully for cutting my shiplap.  I didn’t have to cut any fancy angles, just straight cuts.  But down the road I may need it for some angles.  You can find one of these for less than $20 on Amazon, FYI.

I also didn’t really use a tiny hammer and nails, I just used some Titebond Quick and Thick glue to attach my boards to the wall.

I shiplapped (not a real verb, but it works here) the back wall as well as the fireplace surround.

OK, I have to admit that the corner near the bottom is a bit wonky.  But that’s far more noticeable in this photo than it is in person.  Plus, to do this ‘right’, I should have removed the base board, added the shiplap, and then replaced the baseboard over it.  But ain’t nobody got time for that.

Plus, I’m a beginner.  Everything doesn’t have to be perfect, right?

Also, I should note that you can buy 1:12 scale shiplap paneling in sheets, but I think it would be more difficult to cut a full sheet of ‘paneling’ to fit an existing wall.  Whereas these strips were quite easy to cut using my new tool.  In addition, I think shiplap looks more legit when you have staggered seams like I’ve created on the back wall (although in real life you’re supposed to caulk those seams).

What do you think of my fiddly shiplap job?

Not too bad?

I want to encourage any of you who are thinking about tackling your own dollhouse renovation to consider starting with a shiplap wall or two.  It was fairly easy and a real confidence boost when you realize that you can do fiddly things after all!

Be sure to check back on Wednesday for the full reveal of the main bedroom.

In my ongoing search for all things dollhouse related, I’ve come across some really amazing artisans that I think are just too good not to share with you guys here.  I know some of you are as mesmerized by miniatures as I am, so you may want to check these out.

First up is Chris Toledo Miniatures.

Does that just leave you speechless or what?  Not only is his detail absolutely amazing, but I love his vintage style.

Here’s one of his bathrooms.

Click this link to see his full gallery, it’s amazing.

Next up, Craig Labenz.

The detail in his work is amazing.

You can check out more of it here.

He also offers classes that come with a kit for making specific items.  I don’t think I’m anywhere near ready to attempt something like that, but I’ll keep it in the back of my mind.

This next one is a YouTube channel called Min Makes.

Unfortunately there are only three videos (of 3 different rooms) available so far.

The videos show everything in that room being handmade.  Every single one of those butterflies was cut out by hand.  That’s definitely way more patience than I have, I struggled with cutting out three Shiny Brite boxes.

Speaking of YouTube videos, another channel I have been watching is hitsuji no ie. from Japan.

There is no voice over on this channel, background music plays as he/she is building.  But you’d be surprised just how much you can learn from just watching someone.  I’ve put several techniques from these videos to use already.

Lavender Belle Miniatures is another one that I stumbled upon.

She got her start renovating old dollhouses.  Hey, if she can start there maybe I can too?

Check out her Instagram page to see more examples of her work.

Unfortunately it looks like she took a break from miniatures in 2022 and hasn’t returned.

Finally, there is Mulvany & Rogers.

They’ve been creating miniatures for 30 years.

Honestly, their work goes beyond anything I could ever aspire to.

It’s not always dramatic and/or gilded, but even their more ‘plain’ rooms are stunning.

The details are so precise that you wouldn’t even guess this was miniature if I didn’t tell you.

Except when they give you clues …

Like a real sized garlic bulb in the kitchen.

Funny, Chris Toledo used that same prop in one of his kitchen room photos.

I wonder who started that trend?  I may have to copy it myself as well.

Although that would imply that I think my rooms are indistinguishable from the full sized versions in photos, and that’s definitely not the case.  So maybe I won’t copy that idea after all.

Either way, I certainly feel massively inspired after checking out these amazing artists and I hope you enjoy them as well!

 

So far you’ve seen my dollhouse dining room table and chairs, and the rug I purchased for the room.

And you’ve also seen the sideboard that I painted up more recently.

As well as the extra two chairs for either side of the sideboard.

And that brings me to the room itself.

Here is how it looked before I gave the house to my in-laws.

My tastes have definitely changed.  I would count burgundy as one of my least favorite colors these days, but I sure used a lot of it in this room.  And that reddish stained furniture, ugh.

Here’s how the room looked when I got the dollhouse back from my in-laws, complete with some spooky cobwebs on the chandelier (and for those of you who don’t know this story, check out my post that explains it here).

As I mentioned, they had misplaced the box with all of the house’s contents.  There are a few items I wish I had, but for the most part I’m OK with starting over with furnishings.

I had originally planned to provide a little drama in the dining room with dark grey walls, and in fact I’d even painted the first coat on one wall back in September.

That would have been a striking look.  It would have set off the white paneling and trim work beautifully.

But then I ordered the I.O.D. Gloria paint inlay.  And now you’re probably wondering what in the world a Christmas themed paint inlay would have to do with a dollhouse and that’s a fair question.

Although some of the designs in the Gloria inlay are overtly Christmas-y, many of them are not.  And they are absolutely gorgeous.

As soon as I saw that flute playing cherub I thought it would make the perfect mural for the wall in the dollhouse dining room.

Unfortunately it was too big.

But then I saw this page …

And that Seal Engravers transfer on the bottom right was the perfect size for my wall.

I was a little nervous about the application process, but it worked out beautifully.  I just used my normal technique to apply it (for more detail on how to apply a paint inlay check out this how-to post).

Talk about drama!

Next up I painted all of the ‘woodwork’ and the ceiling in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth to give me a blank canvas.  Ultimately I then decided to paint just part of the ceiling in a pale blue green (much like my own ceilings).

Let me tell you, that was a tricky process.  First of all, I have the vision of a 61 year old.  Secondly, it has been incredibly dreary here over the past several weeks, so lighting wasn’t ideal.  Lastly, I was painting the ceiling in place, so craning my head around to try and get in there to both see it and paint it was challenging.

I ended up having to use a hand mirror to see what I was doing.

That other item in the photo is a light, which I turned off to take the photo.  But it did help to blast a spot light onto the ceiling while I was painting.  As for painting while looking in a mirror … well … I’m going to have to get a lot more practice before that works well.  I was constantly moving my brush in the wrong direction.

But ultimately I got the ceiling painted.

That color is a mix of about 25% Dixie Belle’s Tide Pool and 75% Endless Shore.

I am finding that colors look a lot darker in these small dollhouse rooms than they do on larger objects.  So even with 75% warm white added to it, this Tide Pool looks darker than I expected it to.  Full disclosure, I did paint it first with a 50/50 mix, and then went back over it with the 25/75 and decided to call it good.

My ceiling paint job is definitely less detailed than the original, but my dad had the advantage of painting it as he was putting it together.  He didn’t have to use a mirror 😉

For one last touch, I applied Dixie Belle’s Gold gilding wax to the plaster medallion around the chandelier.

That brings me to the electrical.  I have to admit, I have no idea how I’m going to tackle that.  I know nothing about wiring, and thus I have no idea how to replace any of the hard-wired light fixtures throughout the house like this chandelier.  Not to mention that of course the wiring was done as the house was being built, so I can’t really get to most of it.

None of the lights on the first floor are currently working, including this dining room chandelier, but most of the lights on the upper two floors are still working.  So do I replace the dining room chandelier with a more attractive, but non-functioning version?  Do I attempt to fix the wiring somehow, and re-wire a new light?  That’s a problem for another day.

**Update:  since I originally took the photos for this post, handyman/neighbor Ken came over and he suggested I play around with the fuse box.

Yes, the dollhouse has a fuse box!

And as it turned out, one of those tiny 8 switches on the upper right side was flipped down.  So we flipped it back up and voila!

The lights on the first floor are on.  For the most part anyway, there are a couple of burnt out bulbs.

So, to recap, one wall in the dining room has the paint inlay, sideboard and two chairs.

On the opposite wall I’ve hung a trio of military panoramic photos that I purchased from The Curated Farmhouse on Etsy.

I’ve placed the trunk below them, but I’ll be on the lookout for something else for that spot that feels more ‘dining room’ to me.  This trunk is most likely going to end up in the principle bedroom.

The rug, dining table and chairs are in place.

So for now I’m calling the dining room ‘done’.

Down the road I’d like to find small details to add to the room, like a nice floral centerpiece for the table, and maybe some dishes, etc.  At some point I need to deal with both the front foyer and the stairwell that are visible behind this room.

But for the most part, one room down, eight to go.  Plus that stairwell and foyer, plus the exterior.

I don’t want to rush things though.  I’m having way too much fun with this project!  Also, I’m sure that over time I’ll be adding things, and taking things away.  Much like with any sort of decorating, things can continually be evolving and you’re never really ‘done’, right?

Be sure to leave a comment and let me know what you think of the new and improved dining room.

Billy Joel says you have to get it right the first time, that’s the main thing.  But I beg to differ.  Sometimes it takes several tries before I get it right.

Such was the case with this 1:12 scale trunk.

Now, what I should have done is take photos of each attempt so that I could share them with you, but I didn’t do that.  Drat!

But I can tell you that I initially painted this trunk in Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth, which was a bit boring.  But it was intended to work as a bed side table in the guest room of the dollhouse, and both the bed and the armoire already have a lot of detail to them.

But when I put the trunk in the room, it was both too plain, and too ‘matchy’ since both the bed and the armoire are also painted in Drop Cloth.

So then I thought it might be fun to decoupage one of the Tim Holtz Worn Wallpaper Scraps around the outside of the trunk.  So I picked one out, and used Mod Podge to apply it.  And then I put the trunk back in the room, and realized that the floral wallpaper was too much.  It overpowered the more subtle transfers on the bed and armoire.

So I used warm water to help me scrape that paper back off the trunk, and then I painted it in Dixie Belle’s Sawmill Gravy.  I thought maybe that would be enough of a color difference to work next to the Drop Cloth pieces.

That would have worked OK, but it didn’t wow me.

So that’s when I decided that maybe the trunk just wasn’t going to work in that room, and I should just do whatever I wanted with it not knowing where it would end up.

So I painted it in Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage.  Then I used my super skinny tape to mask off some grain sack stripes that I painted in Drop Cloth.  Once everything was dry, I sanded to distress and then added one of the re.design with prima knob transfers.

I finished off the outside with some of Dixie Belle’s Big Mama’s Butta.

As for the inside, I left that painted in the Sawmill Gravy, and I used one of those Worn Wallpaper Scraps to line the bottom.

Sweet.  But probably no one will ever actually see the inside of the trunk.

While I had my paint out, I also painted up two more chairs for the dining room.  I decided that I wanted two extra chairs to sit on either side of the sideboard, as well as four chairs for around the table.

In case you don’t remember, here is what the original set of 4 dining room chairs look like.

Unfortunately, I used up the last of that particular re.design with prima knob transfer on that set.

But I decided that I could paint up two more chairs in the same colors and style (here are the full details on that project), and then add a different knob transfer and they would still work.

I have to confess, I got a bit sloppy with those grain sack stripes this time around.

But that’s OK, that transfer helps disguise them a bit.  And these chairs will be tucked under the table for the most part.

Speaking of which, on Friday I’m going to share the reveal of the full dining room makeover!  So be sure to check back!

I needed a sideboard for the dining room of my dollhouse, so I did a bit of searching online.  I wanted something that would fit in with my French country cottage style.

So many of the sideboard/buffet pieces out there have more of a Victorian vibe.

But eventually I decided on this one from Miniature Crush.

It came with drawer pulls in that classic Colonial style that I don’t really love.

If you’ve followed me for long, you know that I used to take these off full sized furniture too.  They just aren’t my favorite look.

To help make the sideboard look a bit more cottage-y, I ordered some cup pulls to use on the drawers instead.

OK, they are really teeny tiny and I struggled to get a good photo of them.  Just hang on for a minute and you’ll see them in place.

I first gave the piece a light sanding with some 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out some of the edges.  I’m finding that most of these unfinished dollhouse pieces have some rough spots.

Next I gave it two quick coats of Dixie Belle’s Gravel Road.

Once the paint was dry, I lightly sanded the edges to distress them.  Then I used some super glue to attach the new cup pulls.

I then mixed some of Dixie Belle’s brown wax with some of their Big Mama’s Butta to make the wax more spreadable and applied that as my top coat.  There are two ways I like to use the brown wax; I either add it after first applying a coat of clear wax, or I mix it with the Butta like I did here.  Otherwise brown wax over a chalk style paint can sometimes appear a bit heavy handed.

I do like the way the brown wax both deepens and warms up the color of the Gravel Road.

I cut some liners for the drawers with some Worn Wallpaper Scraps by Tim Holtz (purchased at Hobby Lobby).

For the most part I tried to keep this piece fairly simple.

You’ll understand why when you see it in place in the dollhouse dining room, and that post is coming up soon.

Now that I’ve worked with these pulls, I’m thinking about going back and changing out the hardware on some of my other pieces.  I may just have to order a few more of them.

Meanwhile, what do you think of the sideboard?  Leave a comment and let me know.

You may have noticed that I have a bit of a thing for vintage linens.

Especially when they feature incredible workmanship like this …

But aside from using beautiful pillow cases for their original function, I rarely come up with a good use for other vintage linens.

However, earlier this fall I came across some vintage hand towels at a garage sale and it occurred to me that they would be perfect for creating some custom bedding for my dollhouse project.

And at $1 each, they were a bargain.

I brought them home and gave them a good soak in OxyClean, and then I hung them on the line to dry in the sun.  That one on the top has some rust stains that didn’t come out, but otherwise they all cleaned up beautifully.

Before I got started on creating my miniature bedding, I had to deal with the bed itself.

I purchased this unfinished bed from The Modern Dollhouse.  It will go in the same room as the armoire that I shared back in October.

So I used the same technique to paint the bed; a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Secret Path, followed by two coats of Drop Cloth.  Then, after sanding to distress the edges and reveal some of the base color, I added more of the re.design with prima Vintage Labels II Middy transfers to the foot board.

I also added just a little section of the transfer to the headboard as well.

All that remained was to turn those pretty vintage linens into some form of miniature bedding.

At first I was going to just sew up some seams by hand, but then I decided maybe it’s time to learn a new skill.  I guess it’s not entirely a new skill, my mom did teach me to sew on a sewing machine when I was young.  She even helped me sew a wardrobe appropriate for an office job when I was in my early 20’s and didn’t have much money to spend on new clothes.

But I haven’t sewn on a machine in decades, and I also didn’t own one.  So I popped onto Amazon and picked out what looked like the most basic sewing machine they had.  I didn’t need anything fancy, I just want to sew a straight seam.

I had to watch a YouTube video to learn how to thread the machine.  Then I practically had to use a magnifying glass to thread the needle, but I eventually got it.  Now don’t ask me for a recommendation on this machine, I’ve only used it to sew a handful of straight lines so far.  I’ll definitely have to use it a bit more before giving an opinion.

After a bit of practice with some fabric scraps, I was ready to sew the duvet for my dollhouse bed.  Honestly, this was super basic.  I just cut out the section of the linen towel that I wanted on the bed, then cut another piece of the towel in the same size for the back.  I sewed three sides together with the right sides of the fabric facing each other, then turned it right side out.  I ran a quick iron over it to press the seams down a bit.

Then I stuffed it with a single layer of batting to make it look like a puffy duvet.

I cut the edge off a separate linen napkin to create the folded over edge of a sheet.

Rather than sew that, I just used hot glue to hold the raw ends in place after tucking them under my duvet.

I did sew up two sides of the little pillow case though, making it out of a folded over piece of scrap.  The pretty edging on the open end is the original edging from the linen towel.

I stuffed it with some batting cut up into small pieces.

I ran a bead of hot glue down both sides of the bed to keep the duvet folded down over the sides.

Not terrible for my first foray into miniature bedding, right?

I’d love to have a full sized version of that duvet on my own bed, wouldn’t that be gorgeous?

If I could do one thing over, I think I would go back and tea dye the linen.  The white is a little bright for my taste, especially next to the Dixie Belle Drop Cloth.  But that’s just one of those perfectionist-y details that matter to me and probably absolutely no one else.

With that, I think I have all the furniture I’m going to need for the ‘guest room’ of my dollhouse.  Next up I have an idea for a wall treatment in that room.  However, I’ve been holding off on bringing the dollhouse inside to work on it.  It’s going to take up a lot of space, and it’s not super portable.  For that reason I was thinking I’d wait until after the Christmas decorations are down before bringing it in the house.  But I’m itching to get started, so I may scrap that idea and just get going on it.  We’ll see.

In the meantime, how do you like my vintage linen duvet?  And do any of you have any sewing tips for me?  If so, I’m all ears!