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!

Coffee Shop

In the last few months, I've started buying a few things here and there for the coffee shop, including a pay phone, and some sweets. I love the carrot cake because I've made real life carrot cupcakes with little carrots on the top (I love to bake and eat anything sugary). The walls will one day be full of fliers and ads and a menu, of course, but all that is up now is a picture I cut out from an Allposters catalog urging the patrons to "drink coffee". I also put the sign up and named the coffee shop. It's called the 71A cafe, after a coffee shop near my house called the 61C cafe. The 61C is named for a bus route which I take every day. The 71A is a different bus route in the part of Pittsburgh I used to live in, which is cooler and has a "hipper" vibe, and this coffee shop is somewhat inspired by the one near my old apartment, so it is named for that bus which I loved to hate for 5 years.

Soon, for Christmas, I will be visiting my parents in eastern PA. They have an A.C. Moore there and I'd love to get another one of these Houseworks shops because they are so easy and fun to build. I told my boyfriend that maybe we would make a Steelers/ Pittsburgh sports team store and it would be all black and gold and that would be really easy to fill because we could print off alot of stuff from the internet (giant Big Ben cardboard cut- outs and the like!). I'd also like to make a bar, because I am part of the time a bartender.

Emerson Row

A while ago, I found the apparently much sought after Emerson Row dollhouse on my local Craigslist for $20! Luckilly, though I wasn't the first to email about it, I was the first to pay, so the house was mine.

A nearly 30 year old kit is kind of a pain. All of the pieces were there, however, a 1/8" plywood kit and a 3/8" MDF kit are completely different things. Early in the building process I cut my finger with an Exacto, bled allover my parquet floors, and kind of put it off for a while. As soon as it got cooler out, though, I started to work like crazy!

The kit box:
My "work" area (which is mostly the floor!)

The shell, so far (and you would not believe how long it took to get this wood to cooperate!)

My attempt at paperclay stone for a foundation (still needs to be painted):

My attempt at paperclay bricks (still need to be grouted/ aged):

I'm still not quite sure what the inside will be furnished like, though it will be contemporary. I have a wealth of ideas but not really any other wealth so I'm trying to be kind of frugal with this one.

I'm back!

After a break from mini-ing (moving, then summer, and vacation, and getting back to being busy and responsible at work) now that it is fall, I can't stop. We went to the Pittsburgh dollhouse show last month, and ever since then I've been spending a few hours a week on mini things. First, I finally got columns for my Georgetown, which were super difficult to find (finally got a bunch from England) and put up my corbel brackets from forever ago.

Then I painted the edges between th rooms on the back of the house to make the whole thing neater. And then I "varnished" (i.e. modge-podged) the wood floors to make them a little bit shiny. Then I put in all of my new goodies (I got a lap-top, a little bonsai, some food... and my favorite, a stand mixer for the kitchen.)

See the stand mixer? It came white, but I painted it teal to give it that $400 Kitchen-Aid look. In the foreground you can see my espresso machine (from a suggestion from Mini MC).Christmas is coming up! Like my invisible dollhouse people, I had better get shopping!


The bathroom finally has towel racks :

See my new lap top?
A great bonsai plant in the living room and a coffee table stand in until I get a real one (this is the back of some case, but hey, it works for modern decor, right?)