Ooh baby

Today' post is dedicated to all things nursery and is also host to Sherbet Lemon's very first tutorial!
After the kitchen, the nursery is usually my favourite room of a doll house and the one I find easiest to fill!

In my mind a nursery should be stuffed with toys, ooze cosy and fun and maybe look a little chaotic, as if it's inhabitants have just torn through the room on a sugar high leaving a trail of disorder behind them.

First up, a bit of show and tell.

My best mini find this year I think has been these guys.

They were displayed in sweetie jars in Wickle, a fab shop in Lewes.

A snip at 30p each, have a feeling I'll be going back for more!

They lend themselves perfectly to marching across book shelves, mantel pieces or the floor. LOVE 'em.

A not so recent addition is this splendid looking lady, maybe my favourite mini of the whole house!

Got her about 8 years ago at a little teddy shop in Canterbury (now closed down) I'm afraid I can not remember who she's made by but I do know she cost more than the 30p spent on her zoo animal room mates! If you can identify her let me know!!

Right, without further ado, let's get to the tutorial.

I try to make my own mini's where possible and when they turn out well it's one of the single most satisfying bits of being a dolls house weirdo !

This pram was done a while back now, there's been a few variations since that have gone to friends or family, this one currently lives under the stairs of big house so it was nice to dust it off and take some pics for the blog.

You will need:

Plain metal pram ( the one pictured is Dolls House Emporium)

Silver enamel paint

Cream enamel paint

Small piece of thin, soft leather

Light weight canvas

Selection of trims and ribbons

Paintbrush

Tacky glue

To make:

Word of warning: Enamel paint can take a long time to dry, manufacturer's directions recommend leaving 6 hours between coats for best results. Also, bear in mind the shape of the pram makes it difficult to paint some areas while others are drying so you may want to do the painting in stages to avoid smudging as you go.

Apply a thin, even coat of the cream enamel paint to the whole of the outside of the pram. (You can leave the outer hood unpainted if you plan to cover it later.) Apply second and third coats as desired.

I used silver paint to pick out the wheel spokes. I left the handles black.

Once the paint has completely dried you can start decorating.

I used a scrap of soft, glove leather for the hood. Cut to size and attach to one side of the outer hood using tacky glue. You can use super glue but I found tacky glue gives more flexibility as you stretch the leather to fit the shape of the pram. For a neat finish I made tiny folds at the base of the hood and glued in place.

Cut 2 pieces of the canvas, 1 for each side of the pram.

Apply a small amount of the glue to the back side as of the panel and attach to the pram, repeat for the other side.

To trim I used co-ordinating lace and picot edging.

Apply the Picot edging all the way around the edges of the side panel.

Attach the lace to the hood edge, let it over hang slightly to create a frill.

Your pram is now finished!

You may wish to add bedding or a doll. For this one I added a little mattress very easily by cutting a piece of card to fit inside pram. Cover the card with some calico or plain cotton. Add a little stuffing for a comfort!

For an aged/ vintage look try staining the canvas with tea before applying it to the pram, or you may wish to leave out the canvas altogether and experiment with lovely glossy paint finishes instead.

Think my next one is going to be a Silver cross inspired Sapphire blue with white, will let you know how it goes!

Phew, well I hope that was interesting?

I'm off to bake Christmas cakes (real sized ones!).

Ta ta for now. x

Just playing

Right, have pulled my finger out and got a few exciting posts up my sleeve for you this week.

But before we get stuck in let's talk about wallpaper!

You may already be aware of the craft line Tildas studio? If not you're missing a treat. Gorgeous project books stuffed with inspiration. Plus, as I recently discovered, scrummy looking fabrics, papers. Oooh!

Picked up one of the Tilda card stock books at John Lewis last week. They're really intended for scrapbookers but the size of most of the patterns lend themselves perfectly to Dolls house projects; plus, the colours are lovely and motifs a bit more stylish than some of the clip-arty, pinky-pink papers available!

So, i had a bit if a play about with a few papers. Feeing florals at the moment, see what you think.

I heart pinterest!

So, move has gone swimmingly and am edging closer to finally having a mini work place again. Hurrah!

To tide me over, I have mostly been perving over my new found love, pinterest.com!

The best way to describe it is as having a never ending collection of other peoples scrapbooks and moodboards all in one place for you to drool over at your leisure.  You can then 'repin' the ones you love or post pics of your own.

Of course I had to see what a search on dolls houses would return and here were some of my faves. Enjoy!

This final pic does not do the original justice, utterly beautiful, a Wendy house for not so little girls! Love.love.love

Habitat: The start of a mini, modern love affair

This week Habitat went bust and I'm gutted!

LOVE this old catalogue cover, + it was only 20p!!

After hearing the news I was saddened, initially for purely selfish reason but also the huge, gaping hole I think it will leave in the British High street. (Also gutted that there is no Ikea store near me to ease the loss.)

I'm sad that now,when I eventually have a grown up life, I won't be able to go and splurdge in there for my grown up house. Sigh.

Also sad because I worked there when I was studying and had a great time and met some lovely people.

However, on the plus side there is now a fantastic closing down sale which I have already indulged in ( if I was still staff there I would be seething at all the circling vultures, instead I consider myself a savvy spender in the throws of recession, ha!)

But, that's enough of real size houses, that's not why we're here is it?!

For a while now I've been excited about the evolving area of modern miniatures.
They are so much more realistic looking than they used to be, and there are a growing number of talented miniaturists bringing this modern style to new audiences. It's all very exciting.
So, with this in mind and the sad news of Habitat's demise let's channel a bit of iconic, contemporary design into the mini world!


For thoroughly modern miniatures head to Elf miniatures for a range of off the peg and bespoke minis.
I was drooling over their made to measure furniture in another recent post, In the kitchen

These are some particularly Habitat-esque pieces to be found there.

For inspiration and great read, check out Call of the small for a fab insight into the versatility of modern minis.

Finally, for the most amazing example of contemporary miniatures that I've found to date go get lost in Modern mini houses.

I've literally lost hours of my life on this blog.
I think what's most engaging about contemporary style dolls houses is that, when done well they could pass as our actual, real-life present day homes.
Don't get me wrong, the traditional, historical dolls houses will always have their charm, but for now, I will be having a mini love affair with all things modern.

Does pink in a dolls house always = Barbie?

Crikey, why are Mondays such an ordeal?!
Just about made it out of the office with my sanity. Thank heavens for gin.

Thankfully there are minis for me to bury my head in, so with out further ado, lets talk colour schemes.
I'm still un-decided on the kitchen. While those lovely little fitted numbers were AMAZING, they also came with a large scale price tag.
At least for now, I'm going to have to economise / rope in Dad to help build my own!

However, the current dilemma troubling my mini mind is this;
Will a pink kitchen look gross/fake/very Barbie?

I guess it's down to a matter of opinion, secretly I would love a real size kitchen much like this one when I'm all grown up and have found a money tree or two to fund it...

That said, I've been quite taken with this one...

Hmm, that's a lot to mull over for a Monday night. I shall ponder with a glass of Gordon's and get back to you.

Toodlypip! x

Printing, sweet things & the end of the world...

Ahh busy but fab week over, plus we seem to have survived the rapture predicted by that sweet little old man in America. Happy days!


The dolls houses have been neglected but not forgotten. 
Here's a few bits and pieces snapped on my travels this week. 
Some will inspire my mini projects others I just liked.


Warning: There is ALOT of cake in this post.



First up, work sent me off to Print Workshop,in Urban Outfitters, Spitalfields, London store the event was celebrating Christine Schmidts book,( also titled Print Workshop). It was a morning of bucks fizz and getting messy with ink and stamp making. So much fun! Also, the book is great. Go buy it! We had some time to nip around Spitalfields market. Too many treasures on offer, I exercised self restraint and left with snap mementos instead.

My foxy friend. There were a lot of stuffed critters...

Owls  and hearts at the workshop

Not terribly exciting, but I liked them

Market treasures

Next,I hopped on the tube to Oxford street and caught my sister on her lunch break we spent some time running around looking at all the grossly expensive bits and bobs in Selfridges before she went back to work and I, well I found the food hall!! 

Macaroon tree

Didn't realise oil and vinegar could be so pretty!

Pretty,pretty.pretty.

If i had £40 to throw on cake this  baby would have  been mine! 

Enjoy the cake! x

Kensington Dolls House Festival 2011 ruined my monday...

Aren't Mondays rubbish?

Just as you get into the swing of the weekend they sneak up, tap you on the shoulder, throw you out of bed and back into the office for another 5 day slog. Nooooo!

Truth is I was extra put out today as I have new toys to play with and, like the child I am,  resented the thought of being separated from them for 9 hours.

Saturday was the first time that I FINALLY got to go to KDF, (that's mini-freak-speak for Kensington Dolls House festival don't you know)after years of missing it due to lack of funds or in-flexible retail shifts I hopped on a train to London town to meet a surprisingly willing mum and sister.


Arriving at Kensington town hall I was like an over excited 5 year old on xmas eve, mum was showing a genuine interest, my sister was mortified.

In we went, it was AMAAZING! We started at the bottom and worked our way up doing a sort of relay of each floor.

A highly unflattering shot of me, gawping at a huuuge dollshouse.

Some of the most memorable highlights were kits to make your mini chimney smoke, state of the art washing machines- with sound effects for wash and spin cycles (there's a very distinct difference) copulating cats and some gorgeous teeny-tiny french teddy bears. One was clutching a little balloon and wearing a sweet little skirt, the whole thing no bigger than the top of my index finger. Alas, as is usually the case with these things this minute, little beauty was going to cost more than my food and travel for the rest of the month, I backed away from the table fearful that in a moment of weakness the visa card would indeed be handed over to the friendly french woman running the stall. Mon dieu!

I had set aside a modest little budget for the trip and proceeded to shock the socks off even myself by not spending up. In fact not spending half of it.

It was clear by my second lap of the venue that something was not quite right.
Despite being confronted with row after row of must-have-minis I was stumped.
Seems that after years of conditioning myself to spend as little as possible on my (lets face it, highly self indulgent) hobby while at Uni I was now incapable of being frivolous, by my former standards any how.

I put it down to the fact that I'm in the process of moving real house, gutting my smallest house, giving away the never really started house and not quite sure where to go with my biggest house. 

Paralysed by my own indecision, I eventually pulled together a few bits and pieces.
Including a cute little pot plant from the Miniature Garden Center, a wooden stool with heart detail and some practical, terracotta plant pots. Mum treated me to a sunflower kit, (apparently the trick is to use real tea leaves for the center to get a realistic effect) and some long sought after fimo cutters.
Better than a poke in the eye, but I had expected to leave with much more post-splurdge guilt.  Satisfied I had seen enough, and to my sisters great relief, we left to find lunch, as if to counter act all the mini-ness we had the biggest, fattest burgers in the world.

My stunted spending abilities aside, it was a lovely day.
I'm sure that the bug will be back... hopefully in time for Miniatura in September!