Baby Present Accomplished!

I finally finished my niece's dollhouse this week after an emergency order from HBS for some "hard wood" flooring (their shipping was so fast, as it generally is, and I had 22 bonus dollars to spend...). We are leaving for the drive across PA in about an hour, but here are some pictures of the finished house.

I still have things I'd like to buy/ make for it, but it turned out to be a big project to accomplish in 2 months (considering almost everything in the house is made from kits or handmade). I still want to make family photos, etc.. and it needs some kitchen things.

The pictures are in no particular order, mostly because I am lazy and still have to pack.

The whole back of the house:

The porch with some hanging plants (bought from HBS):

The whole front of the house:

The couch, built from a vintage Realife Living Room kit bought in a lot of mini stuff from Craiglist:

The whole living room, complete with House of Miniatures clock kit & end table, Realife couch, coffee table, side table, and chair, and poorly homemade curtains & pillows:

Picture in kitchen from catalog with Chrysnbon frame:

Future kitchen with House of Miniature chairs, cool tile wall and floor, and lace curtain (made by gluing a piece of lace to a painted stick and gluing it to the window!):

Detail of homemade bedding, and homemade frame and catalog cutout picture in bedroom. Furniture from vintage Realife bedroom kit bought from Craiglist (got 2 Realife kits, Chrysbon kit, bathroom set, and a dollhouse kit for $20)

Michaels $1 hutch painted and decorated with scrapbook paper in the room which will be the little girls room one day (I have some more kits arriving):

View of whole little girls room with homemade curtain:

Upstairs hallway with H.O.M. table kit and homemade painting (from a catalog, with a "matte" made from a paint color sample from Loews!):

Whole bedroom, homemade curtains, bedding, Realife kit furniture, Chrysnbon kit chair, rug I accidentally bought 2 of, and a hat I received in a grab bag decorated with scrap ribbon and lace:

Office room with cool adhesive ribbon trim on walls, chair from kit bought from HBS, desk and shelf (can be separated) from Realife Living Room kit, vases are little wood bits from Michaels:

Me with the dollhouse in our messy living room... I call our decor, contemporary clutter!

The bathroom pictures didn't attach, but bf is getting eager to begin our 5 hour odyssey! I'll attach them soon, just because the hutch in that room is very cute! Anway, see you next time!

Tables, tables, everywhere

Had a 20% of coupon for an entire purchase at Michaels, and combined with an annoying week at work, and voila- retail therapy...

Wandering through the wood aisles, I noticed these 3 inch candle stick holders (2.99 for a pack of 4) and these 3 inch circle cutouts (2 or 3 dollars for a pack of 6). I cut off a little from the candle holders and glued on the circles and now I have some tables for the coffee shop. They are painted and everything (forgot to take a picture). Also, the cut off bit could be a planter or a vase of some sort.
I ordered 2 Daisy House kits from Ebay from a going out of business miniatures store, and put them together. They were very easy, and seem to be very adaptable to different styles (much more so than the HOM kits). In the below picture is the plant stand kit from Daisy House, as well as the unfinished table now finished from the Manor House sale, and some little cute bird pictures I made from square woodsies, some paint chips, and cutouts from a Posters.com catalog.

Here are the Daisy kits finished, painted black and modge podged in gloss. They remind me of IKEA Lack tables, with straight and simple Parsons-y lines. I'm going to squeeze them in the Georgetown with my modern decor.

Also, here is another weird grab bag I ordered, this time from Ebay. I think I'm going to stay away from grab bags for a while, because I get such strange things. The usable stuff included a gum ball machine, a little log holder for fireplaces, and a tiny Almond Joy candy bar. The other stuff, not so much. I guess maybe I have a little bit of a gambler in me... maybe next time I'll just buy a dollar scratch off ticket, because it would be cheaper and less disappointing!

Until next time...

More Kit Goodness!

Oh, Ebay...

Oh, well... at least these kits were bargains, and for the most part super fun. I think they turned out to be pretty unique. It would have been pretty cool if they continued to make these in all sorts of styles (modern kits would be pretty sweet). I have 6 more kits on the way.

Below is a line up of: the Houseworks kitchen cabinet (from the HBS catalog, it is the sink/stove unit with a different sink in it and a counterop made of natural stone looking scrapbook paper), the tilt-top table kit, the something cabinet or cupboard kit, and the half circle table kit from before. This room will one day be the kitchen by the way, I love this wallpaper so much (40% off a whole book of paper from Michaels with coupon!)

This is the triple tiered server thing and the wing chair. The chair was a pain, but it looks ok. I think the server will be cool in the office, with all sorts of supplies on it.

Close up of bathroom cabinet.

Close up of wallpaper/ half moon table.

These kits were some sort of side chairs and some sort of tea table (maybe?) kit.

I love the couch! Cheap fabric, cheap couch, and I didn't F it up really! The footstool is another kit.

This is a shop sign kit from HBS for the coffee shop. It is decorated with some cool coffee neon stickers I found.
Lastly, not a kit, but here are some pillows I attempted to make from scraps and ribbon, and some curtains and the window seat I made. All in all I think most of these came out pretty girly and fun!

House of Miniatures Kit attempt #1

So, last weekend it snowed alot... so I shopped on Ebay.

I won this kit for like $3. It's kind of traditional for my liking, but for a bohemian chic house, it could work.

It was super easy to build and only needed sandpaper, glue, and paint.


I painted the first coat cream, then added crackle medium, and then a light coat of aqua paint. After the crackle finsihed, I sanded to make it look more aged and went over the whole thing with a thin wash of brown paint to dirty it up a bit. After that all dried, I applied some matte Modge Podge and Voila! Once again, due to my sucktastic picture taking, you don't really get the details, but it looks great and I'd recommend these kits to anyone (you can always find some on Ebay).

Polymer Clay Miniatures

So, after a really long time, I decided to try polymer clay again... I've been reading a bunch of tutorials and stuff, and here is what I came up with.

Not perfect (and my picutre taking sucks) but everythng is pretty identifiable. There's donuts, croissants, cookies, eclairs, bread, cinnamon rolls, some fruit pastries, and some candles. The candles are really cute and were super easy to make. I just rolled some yellow and translucent Premo clay together, formed into a log, cut to about 1/2 inch, squashed a little, and made some thinner rolls for the waxy melty bits. The wick is just black clay rolled really tiny and inserted into a hole in the top. After I baked, I coated in matte sealer. I'm going to make a bunch because I decided that the Emerson Row is going to be bohemian chic.

D.I.Y. ?

January in Pittsburgh has been pretty much full of two things: freezing cold weather and Steeler-mania. For me, of course, this means my boyfriend spends Sundays on the couch drinking beer, and even if he didn't, it's so F'ing cold outside that I just want to stay in here making a mess, gluing tiny little things together while watching the latest and greatest VH1 reality dating show.

Anyway, I've been trying to make the Emerson Row a little more funky, bohemian, and kind of more personal than my Georgetown. I'm trying to make some more stuff or modify stuff that I buy.

So far, this is the living room. The wallpaper is scrapbook paper I bought when I was visiting my parents and the ceiling is one of those common white ones painted with metallic copper paint. I love it so far! I also made the window seat cushion with some fabric I found randomly while looking for ribbon, and some thin batting and cardboard.


This just shows more of the ceilings. I ran out of decent glue so the ceiling lamps are kind of just floating. These ceilings are metallic silver and blackened bronze metallic paint.

I painted this Chrysnbon chair kit cream, then pink with copper accents for the coffee shop. It came out really cute.

I've also been experimenting with printies. The sketch book and the watercolor books have pages with little tiny sketches and paintings on them.

Here are some floors I've been working on for the Emerson, using Greenleaf peel and stick tiles and wood:

And the finsihed wood floor (it looks really cool and old in person, I'd highly recommend these wood strips, they are cheaper than the normal wood flooring sheets and seem more sturdy and versatile)

Emerson Row progress

Hello! It's been a while, again... I'm lazy with the blogging, I suppose. With the holidays, travelling to visit my family, party planning, work, and now playoffs (ha), it's been kind of busy. Luckilly, now, things seem to be slowing down a bit. The Emerson Row has siding on it now, and is seeing little bits of progress every week. I think the colors look great together.

Anyway, Michael's is having a pretty sweet clearance sale, so I have about 30 pieces of scrapbook paper... if only I could decide exactly how I want the inside!