My Micro Dollhouse Collection

I started experimenting with making 1/1728th scale houses (dollhouses for 1/144th scale, or dollhouses for dollhouses for dollhouses) a while ago. These are some of the houses and roomboxes I made out of paper, perched on a penny.

This house was supposed to look like my big dollhouse, though I had to simplify by removing the upper porch. The house shown in the picture below is actually a bit too big, I've since shrunk the graphics down a bit.

I could only fit four rooms inside, and I decided to make it open backed, rather than front opening like my real house.

This was an attempt to copy an antique German roombox. I can't just scale down the real graphics, because they would just turn to shapeless blobs. Instead, I recreate the main features, simplifying as much as possible.

This was one of the first houses I tried to make, so the construction is fairly simple. It's still one of my favorite houses though, perfect for the corner of a micro nursery!Here's the inside. I used bits of laser cut paper on the roof, but I'm still looking for something a bit more delicate looking.

There are free tutorials for some of these houses here, if anyone is interested!

Micro Roombox

And it's been another month since my last post! Time flies! I was looking through photo files the other day, and I came across these old pictures of a 1/144th scale roombox I made acouple years ago.

Unfortunately, I don't have any other photos, as I sold this box on Ebay shortly after finishing it, and the better photos have since disapeared. Lots of little handmade details, including a canterbury full of sheet music (front right) and a blue and white firescreen (back left by the fireplace). The walls were covered with fine gold silk, and the carpet was fuzzy. The box was a butchered bespaq piece. The only things not made from scratch were the (heavily modified) roombox and the oval metal frame.

Paintings

I love to be surrounded by art. I bought a whole stack of musty old art books at the local book sale this summer, and cut them up to paper my dorm. It is the same way in my dollhouse.I can't seem to resist paintings in miniature. This copy of Renoir's In the Meadow is probably my favorite painting. Josephine Meyers does amazing work, and the painting has a lot of sentimental value as well.

I found this painting of ships at the IGMA show a few years ago, and couldn't resist it. The paint has a lovely dimension in real life, which is hard to find in miniature. Most of the paintings I see seem to be thinned down oils, applied with near-invisible brushstrokes. The strokes in this painting are so lively in contrast.

This painting is by an eBay seller named Sylvia Rose, who sells mainly dollhouse curtains, tapestries, and re-upholstered furniture. She only lists a few of her oil paintings on vellum each year. Many of her paintings are copies of Vigee Le Brun, one of my favorite artists, so I'm always tempted to bid, even though I'm quickly running out of wall space in my dollhouse!

Bamboo Chair

This was one of the very first miniatures my mom made for my dollhouse. I desperately wanted a bamboo chair for the parlor, but couldn't find anything that looked right. Nothing was quite as delicate, and the "bamboo" all looked unnatural. So mom made the bamboo by wrapping wire around thin dowels, then built the chair. The rush seat is made from stained string. I painted the chair.

P.S. Sorry about the picture quality. I found my camera, but the charger was not in the case for some odd reason. Two steps forward, one step back.

The upstairs hall

This is a rather quick post, since I've misplaced my camera and have to use old pictures for the moment.

I'm afraid that the hall is in a bit of a mess in the photo. The petite point rug came from a beautiful but badly damaged vintage purse. My grandmother used the frame of the purse to make a new bag which she carried during my aunt's wedding! I haven't yet had the rug backed, so it's normally in storage.

There are lots of people in the hall,mostly named after favorite book characters. The little boy in the back, leaning against the banister is from The Wren's Nest. His name is Ned (Edward), after one of the characters in Louisa May Alcott's book An Old Fashioned Girl.
The little fellow in blue is named Ellis, called Eli for short.
The nursemaid is Martha (the maid in The Secret Garden), but the baby is still unnamed.
The dog, a Bedlington Terrier, is named Marmalade after a dog that I knew as a child. Marmalade's mother, Crumpet, is sitting in the dog bed in Lottie's bedroom.
I hope to post more pictures of the house and other projects this weekend.

Little Leather Boxes

I've been working on more tiny houses, but don't have my camera at the moment (it's at home and I'm at school), so I dug up this photo of an old project instead.
My family loves these gold-tooled leather boxes from Florence, Italy. So of course I had to try making them in miniature a few years ago. They were actually a very quick project. I designed various shaped box patterns on the computer, printed and cut them out. Then I stained masking tape (a stain pen helps quite a lot) and stuck the paper patterns to the sticky side of the tape. Then I cut every thing out again, and assembled the boxes. Since I didn't want the boxes to open, I didn't bother finishing the insides, but a bit of velvet paper on the inside would probably do the trick. The "tooling" is just a bit of gold paint.

Tiny Paper Houses

I've been working on a few tiny paper houses. I design them on the computer, often looking at antique dollhouses for inspiration.

This house was one of the first I created. It was loosely based on photographs of a Tri-ang dollhouse. The doors open to reveal four rooms.
This house was my attempt to make a miniature of my own dollhouse. I couldn't figure out how to make the upper porch though, so it's not quite accurate.

This is the interior of the copy of my house.

This is another tiny dollhouse based on an antique dollhouse. The interior has four rooms. The roof of this house is very difficult to put together.

I did not design this paper model, but I re-sized it quite a bit. I found the model at this website, and printed it out at about 5% the original size. It took me a few days to put together, since I had to take frequent breaks, and I lost at least half the dormers before they were safely glued!