My 1:12 Greenleaf Arthur next to the 1:24 puzzle house Greenleaf, my favorite dollhouse manufacturer, sent out their monthly newsletter this week. It’s a special themed issue all about half scale and includes an article by yours truly. You can check it out here. The newsletter includes a 20% off coupon for Greenleaf’s online store, […]
Category: Dollhouses (Page 23 of 28)
Earlier in the summer I finished the garden for my puzzle house—all except the trellis. I wasn’t sure how to make it look like it had vines woven through it without adding too much bulk to the back to attach it to the house. Yesterday, with my mom’s help, I did the deed… and it […]
Back in April, after I built a pantry for the Fairfield, I mini-splurged on half scale jars of Skippy peanut butter and Welch’s grape jelly. I usually don’t buy foodstuffs because with a scanner and a color printer, they’re easy to make, but these came in cute little jars, and I was excited about the […]
I have always loved the Westville’s shutters, but it didn’t occur to me until this weekend how much work goes into them. So far I’ve spent about five hours sanding, wood filling, and painting, and could conceivably spend another five hours before they’re all done. Luckily a re-watch of My So-Called Life (for the umpteenth […]
Electrifying a dollhouse is one of my most dreaded activities, and I’m not sure why. It’s not really that difficult, and it’s not messy, and nothing beats the satisfaction of flipping a switch and seeing the lights go on. Of course, if you flip the switch and the lights don’t go on, that’s when it […]
It has always bugged me that dollhouse bedrooms tend not to have closets. In a real house, you can’t call it a bedroom if it *doesn’t* have a closet, but if you want them in a dollhouse, you usually have to make them yourself. Luckily, they’re pretty easy to make. In my first dollhouse, I […]
My copy just arrived, so start checking your local mini store for this issue! I wrote a tutorial for the half scale window boxes my mom and I dreamed up for the Fairfield. The window boxes are made from skinny sticks, clay, and sprigs of fake flowers that you can get for cheap at stores […]
I actually finished this up over Fourth of July weekend, but forgot to post the pictures. Oops. I really liked the trim my dad added to the base of the Fairfield and I wanted to do the same for the puzzle house. Geoff helped with the cutting and mitering. The base is a bit thicker […]
The other day I was mulling over puzzle house path ideas, but wasn’t crazy about either one. Yesterday I came up with a third option that’s a winner—”flagstones” made out of egg carton material. I’ve heard of people using egg cartons to make miniature bricks and stones, but this is my first time trying it. […]
Yesterday I received my recent order from The Vintage Dollhouse, a shop in Houston that’s (unfortunately) closing out their half scale merchandise. One of the items I ordered was the metal mailbox in the picture below. I wasn’t sure if it would look weird to have the mailbox inside of the fence, but now that […]
Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting fake flowers to landscape the puzzle house, and today I made the first few plants. Click here for a close-up. I want this garden to have more of an autumn color scheme than the Fairfield’s pinks and purples, so I’ve been looking for more subdued foliage. I […]
Today I made a tree to go outside my puzzle house. I used a bare Lemax tree that I bought on clearance years ago and the “foliage” left over from the Fairfield’s shrubbery. The tree is from the Sugar ‘n Spice line, which means it’s supposed to look like candy. It started out white and […]
I have always envisioned the puzzle house as a country cottage with hardwood floors throughout. Last weekend I bought coffee stirrers to use for the floors. The skinny stick hardwoods I did in the Fairfield just seemed too thick and clunky. To my surprise, I couldn’t find wooden stirrers at Costco, Staples, Target, or the […]
In my last puzzle house post, I expressed uncertainty about the outcome of my homemade apex trim experiment. After reading the comments people left about the pictures, I decided to make a few modifications. I removed the newel post and shaved a bit more off the top, so the bottom points of the trim line […]
The puzzle house that I was so gung-ho about last fall has been sitting patiently in the workshop while I’ve been focused on the Fairfield, so yesterday I gave it some love. Months later, I’m still unhappy with how off-center the upstairs window looked under the gable (you can see a picture here), so I […]
After landscaping the Fairfield, I finished up the fiddly trim bits inside, so the house is officially “move-in ready.” I posted a gallery on Greenleaf’s forum that shows all of the empty rooms. I’m especially happy with how well the trim I added to the edges of the plywood hides the massive warping on the […]
The other day I posted a bunch of pictures of the finished Fairfield garden looking all nice and pretty. Now I’ll show you how it got that way. Most of the supplies my mom and I used to landscape the Fairfield were fake flowers that came from Michael’s, with a few previous Dollar Tree purchases […]
My Fairfield has been in progress for six and a half years, and it’s *this* close to being complete. I have some details to finish (a few baseboards, the upper porch railings), plus I’m still working on furniture for some of the rooms. But even though it’s not quite done, the house has been placed […]
I’ve been working my way through the Fairfield’s rooms, trying to get the interior finished so I can put the house on display. My most recent accomplishment is completing the trim, flooring, and some finishing touches in the kitchen. I’ve always had a vision in my head of how I’d finish the pantry, and finally […]
I’m not much of a gardener, but last summer I discovered that growing vegetables is a lot of fun. (And yummy!) This week Geoff’s mom helped me pick out and plant veggies for a second round. This year’s garden includes three types of tomatoes: one plant each of Juliet grape and “brown berry” tomatoes, plus […]
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