Even more store progress!

While I bake some more clay, here are some pictures of my progress on the coffee shop this week:







The floor is done with cheap, $2.99 a bag skinny craft sticks and some left over varnish. I like how it kind of looks worn out. The stones in the front are paper clay (I've started painting them tonight) and the walls are now embelished with left over trim from my dollhouse and some sale ribbon. The wainscoting on the back wall is made from popsickle style thick craft sticks painted deep purple, then coated with crackle, and painted light greyish-white.

The good news is I finished my taxes today, so I feel a shopping excursion coming on. I am searching still for mini cappucino/ espresso makers. I bid on a fridge magnet that's slightly bigger than scale but detailed and sleek looking. I may even try out the Re-Ment coffee makers, since they look modern (even if they are bigger). If anyone has any other suggestions... please PLEASE write me!

Store progress (Houseworks Street of Shops)

I had a field day at Michael's today (lots of good bargains) and worked a little on the shop after work. The outside is now aged (with a wash of brown paint, crackle medium, and sanding) and I've begun working on the inside walls.

Also, all polymer clay 2 ounce packs were on sale for 99 cents, so I've begun experimenting with it. So far, I suck, and that's ok, but at least you can tell that my coffee mugs are coffee mugs... at least I hope so!

Another project!

So, we went on a little roadtrip this weekend and had a great time... incidently, we happened to be near an AC Moore store (none of this in Pittsburgh). I printed out one of their coupons and got a Houseworks shop kit (the 2 window store) and a bunch of paints.

My plan for this is an artistic, city coffee house with a bulletin board, tasty treats, mismatched bohemian style furniture, and maybe a microphone and a guitar.

I'd love to find an espresso or cappucino machine in 1/12 scale, which is so far not happening. I'd also like a commercial style refirgerator with a clear door for displaying sodas and the like.

So far, the front has a coat of paint which I want to grime up a bit... oooh, maybe with some graffiti or something. Anyway, here is what I have so far.

Other rooms

The house has 2 other rooms. The plum room is going to be a game room/ bar (I think the mini liquor bottles are so cute) and the orangish room is going to be a home office/ guest room.

For the guest room, I have a mini futon that I bought from HBS. It's so cute and it really folds out into a bed. I think this room will look really great with a mess of books and papers, perhaps a little tv... Maybe I should start working on my taxes so I can go shopping with my tax return!

Hallways

This house has a hallway on every floor, right in the middle of the rooms. Each of the hallways is painted in a khaki color and has hardwood floors stained in mocha.

The foyer is something I've been working on. I love the flagstone, unfortunately I can't cut straight lines for anything, but I think with the trim it looks ok. The flagstone is part of a sheet from HBS that was all white. I painted it with washes of acrylic and put a little chalk into the mix. The red light is also from HBS. It had an accident when I was placing the walls and the wires were ripped out of the ceiling. This is as good as I can get it to look right now.

The second floor landing has its bannisters up. I bought a pre-assembled set which was a big sanity-saver.

The top floor landing is going to be a hallway/art studio. My mom got me the little art table, and I made the bookshelves out of balsa, scrapbook paper, and paint.

The bedroom

This is the bedroom so far, I love the bright green walls (I want to paint my real life bedroom this color!). I actually made the bedding with some clearance and sale fabrics from JOanns, and I don't even sew. You can accomplish alot with ribbon and glue. The comforter is actually padded like a real comforter; I glued flat makeup spnges to a piece of magazine paper and glued the fabric around it. Most of the items are once again from Dollshouse Emporium (they have reasonably priced modern miniatures and the best selection of modern lamps out there). The purple chair is from Ebay, it is a Raine Rake A Seat chair. I need to do a great deal of decorating in here, including some wall decor and a dresser of some sort. The issue with these rooms are that they are all longish and narrow, so the dresser is going to have to be pretty small.

The beginnings of a living room

So far, the living room is kind of a mess. The blue tape blob is a light I hardwired when I was learning how to tape wire the house, so I kind of had to paint around it. The room still needs all of its trim. There isn't alot of space, so I don't know if I can fit everything that I'd like to fit.

The walls are 3 different colors (tan, fuschia, and a striped and glossified piece of scrapbook paper). The couch and ceiling light are from Dollshouse Emporium, the fireplace is a cheap wooden one that I painted and added some mosaic stones for the hearth and a painted brick latex sheet to the interior walls. The mantle is covered with marble effect paint chips from Lowes which were then coated with decoupage gloss. The cow print chair is from ReacJapan, bought on Ebay (can't say enough about the Designer Miniature collection!) The floor is a Houseworks wooden sheet stained with a mocha wood stain. I've started stiching some toss pillows, and I'd love some black and white photos on the wall and a shag area rug. Just wait until you see the lamps for this room.

The kitchen, so far

Ok, so maybe the kitchen looks a little more 70s than modern, but perhaps we can pretend that it was redesigned 30 years ago and it's imaginiary inhabitants really dig the green and gold grooviness of the whole thing.

The patterned wall is a pice of Martha Stewart scrapbook paper, the fixtures were a Christmas gift from my lovely boyfriend (from Dollshouse Emporium). The chairs are Bozart, and the various little things were either gifts or bought at the dollhouse show we attended in October. I particularly love the mini Fiesta-ware type dishes (thanks, Mom) and the little liquor bottles set out on the breakfast table. The floor is a clear vinyl sheet with a 3D pattern you can paint any which way you like (puffy paint works well for grout with its pointed tip). The sheets (it took 2 of them) were from HBS. I still need a fridge, and a wall phone. And lots of food.

The bathroom, so far.

The bathroom is on the top floor, and has since acquired a door. The modern bathroom fixtures are from Dollshouse Emporium, including the silver lights. The ceiling light is from Ebay, I think. The platform is made out of a corner from a chocolate box covered in one of those vinyl sheets. The mirror is from Michaels (like one dollar for 2 mirrors.) The ceiling was made from DAP lightweight spackling and textured with a sponge and painted white. It really hides wiring mistakes!

I'd like to add some towel racks and lots of toiletries. I also plan on making some little Mark Rothko-esque paintings and framing them.

RGT's Georgetown Dollhouse... the beginning.... A Modern Dollhouse Voyage

Perhaps I'm a dork, or living out some sort of strange second childhood, but late last summer I decided I needed to build a dollhouse, complete with working lights, tiny food, and all sorts of fun, little things.

I bought a Real Good Toys Georgetown kit from my local dollhouse store, and had my boyfriend lug the 60 pund box up my steps where I left it in the box for at least a month, confused by the instuctions.

I had big ideas for this house, though.

There are 2 things I wanted to accomplish. The first was I wanted it to look like a house in my neighborhood, a sort of run down area of Pittsburgh that was once a fancy, city suburb. The houses are all brick, with long porches and columns.

The other thing I wanted to do was make the house modern, or at least contemporary on the inside. I love all kinds of 20th century design, and I wanted my dollhouse to reflect how I might furnish my dream house now. Unfortunately, modern and contemporary miniature items are few and far between.

The following pictures are just some of the steps I took when finally constructing the house. Each one of my bricks in painted individually (which I did while watching seasons one through 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Dying the shingles dyed my hands for about 3 days (even though I wore gloves) and eventually I decided to ditch the original porch posts and some of the railings because they came out so crooked.

Finally, after months of work (don't even get me started on wiring the @#$%ing thing!) the house currently looks like this on the outside:

Except now it has some porch lights. Anyway, next time I'll show what I've done to the inside.