Hunting plaques

No animals were hurt in the making of this miniature - unless you count my husband who nearly provided me with a human finger to mount..! These are super quick and easy to make and i think they are really effective and add a little je nes se quai to any Victorian study (can you tell i don't speak french?!?! Sorry to all French speaking people for my appalling spelling)

First fight with a scalpel and nearly cut your fingers off them get your husband to do the hard bit! Decapitate several plastic toy animals, as you can see i chose an elephant, a hippo and a buffalo type thing to mount.

Next cut out some mounts, it would look great in wood, i was lazy and made it out of thick card, painted it brown-ish and then trimmed it with gold paint applied very roughly with a cocktail stick.

 Glue them in place with super glue. And your done! easy huh?!

 woops that's badly off centre!

And i need to do something better with that wall it looks far too plain... watch this space!

Much Love
Freya xxx

Faux marble pillars

 I made these faux marble pillars for only 20p each! and in only two steps, here's how!

 Firstly i bought these 3 cake pillars at a charity stall for only 20p each, i have seen them in other charity shops so they seem to be readily available, or of course you could buy them from any craft shop or cake decorating shop.

 Next i re-painted them white to hide scuffs and chunks out of the plaster. Because they are made of plaster they soak up the paint fast and so drying time is very short.

First I painted some veins in one direction in grey on the pillars, you can see i did the first two here. It helps to have a picture of marble infront of you for realism, but the joy of marble is that it's random. the tricky part was pushing it into the dips in the pillar.

 Next I added black veins with a cocktail stick as it needed to be thinner, i got a bit carried away on the right hand one thinking it was tree roots, so that side can go up against a wall. I have varnished the right hand one but you can't really tell so i didn't bother with the other two, i may go back and do that later though.

 Here is the pillar in the study with my new peg doll - another charity shop but 35p! It needed love and care and came home with me to live in the house.

This is the square one in the bathroom and i think it looks fab!

I did all 3 in about an hour so have fun and enjoy marble pillars the cheap way!

Much Love,
Freya xxx

Making a lamp from beads

 First i raided the charity shops for old jewellery, it pays to ask them if they have any broken jewellery or stuff that won't sell? I bagged over 10 necklaces, which were hideous but had some great interesting shaped beads, i now have a whole range of beads made of wood, plastic, gems and glass for £2.50 beat that!

I also got these earrings specifically for this purpose, at 50p.

I literally just stacked and glued the smaller beads to the flat bead and painted silver to match the 'shade' and glued the shade on.

Very quick, very easy and I think very effective!

Much Love
Freya xxx

Sorting out the Library/Study

I had this area above the staircase which was an odd shape and a bit sad looking, i thing it was just used as landing but it is a decent sized room and i wanted to utelize the space.

I decided that it would make it into a study and started thinking about how to go about this...

The first thing i did was sort out the plain walls, i found this wonderful fabric paper which i used to paper the walls on the back and the left hand side. It was a nightmare, i cut it perfectly but as we put it on it stretched like crazy and i got really annoyed with it. You can see at the back left hand side where it stretched too long and then stuck like cement to the beam and i couldn't get it off to cut... so i left it... very naughty.

 The next step was the floor, i HATED the floor it just didn't look like parquet flooring, i thought it would look cool with a copper flooring to match the copper trim i put around the bay. I went to B and Q and found a small sheet of aluminum coloured copper with a beaten pattern. PERFECT! I cut it to fit and i think it looks very dapper.

I received the bookcase for free from a very kind lady who was getting rid of some of her miniatures, it was a shop cabinet which was too high so i cut it down to fit the space and painted it brown. (all the items on the shelf were from the lady too!)

The next step was this Hideous banister, it had been handmade from very thick wood and had very crude shapes cut from the middle. I tried to re-carve these into a rectangle but the wood started splintering and my patience didn't last. I chose to go the easy way out.

I went into my stash of cheap wallpapers and found this nice grey paper with a nice border, there wasn't enough for a wall even so this was the perfect use. I cut some 300 GSM card to the correct width and height and covered it with the paper. Then i glued it round the existing banister.

I think that looks a million times better!

Trying furniture in place - i definitely need a desk as the kitchen table is far too wide, but the chaise looks great there, a lovely spot for reading a book!

Ignore the lamp - it's getting replaced but it came with the house. I next spent 3 days making books from Fimo, i will when i get round to it do a tutorial for these. The rug i had another bargain (50p!!!!) As you can see i trimmed the bookcase in gold as it looked so dark back there. The lovely Egyptian dog was a charity shop find for £1! The desk was bought at a fair, yesterday with the chair ( i still need to paint the chair obviously) The papers were printies which i also got from that kind lady for free!

 The pillar is a cake pillar with an amazing hand turned vase ontop made by 'al-turn-ative miniatures' who i have fallen in love with, they also made the umbrella stand and the canes and umbrella inside.

I trimmed the desk and drawers with green leather effect paper which i think really adds something!

Nearly finished!!!

Much Love
Freya xxx

Doing up my bathroom!

 This is what my bathroom begin life as, I had already done the floor and wallpaper on two walls before i took any photos as i couldn't wait to cover up the hideous floral print on the right hand side. I discovered in doing this that my ability to put up wallpaper in dollshouses is 0. I got glue everywhere and cut it all wrong and then ran out of paper. genius. (you can see the white gap at the back top left bit :( not good)

I had put some furniture i had in it already but it looked empty and like i'd just plonked furniture i already had in it. which i had.

 This is the space after i took out the furniture. They are big rooms that allow you alot of scope, so i felt i had to do something cool.

 I had given up on the wallpaper at this point and mixed some acrylic paint to cover the final wall. I wanted a jewel green so mixed 3 greens randomly. they came out great actually! Pot luck!

 The cheap loo came with the house. I decided to try to muck about with it and redesign it instead of paying for a new one.

First i used my man's (Vinny) manly strength to prize the cistern off. I wanted to make it into a loo with the cistern on the ceiling like old fashioned types. But glam.

I painted the cistern black and edged with a sticker and painted the bowl gold and put a black sticker on that. I still need to finish it so its a work in progress.

Next i decided that it would be fancy to have a sort of booth to house the toilet and sink with curtains. I felt it needed a few steps to fully differentiate it from the floor of the main bathroom.

I made a simple box from foam board and covered it in the left over wallpaper to match, i didn't quite have enough so i raided my scrapbooking paper to find a contrasting piece.

The beams were a bugger and i kept having to take it out, cut bits out and shove it back in place. That's my fault for not measuring properly.

I then made the curtains in the normal way with the same fabric i used for the chaise longue and matching chair, i couldn't decide which would finally live there. I then tried to make tie backs, but i had a migraine coming along and the fabric was fighting me all the way so i used a loop of velvet ribbon instead, i think it looks fine.

The Valance at the top of the booth was painted gold and stick on gems from the pound shop no less finished it off.

Then i started putting things back in including a lot of greenery, it's a bathroom cum conservatory! Very posh if i do say so myself!

However as i had added this booth i had used up the only wall to put a cupboard for storage. No problem! I will convert the fireplace! I painted the back gold and stuck in a foam board shelf covered in my last scrap of wallpaper.

The chair won, it lives there with it's footstool and two bears so people can sit and chat to the person in the bath. Well People they are VERY close to anyway!

The hat box is made from an old tea box, it had pretty paper and weirdly i used the same ribbon, complete coincidence! (or maybe i just don't have alot of ribbon so the choice is limited) The slippers are felt and ribbon trim which match the dressing gown hanging on the door, the rest was bought as i'm lazy!

O dear my 'Vinny' wedding cake topper has found his way into the bath - fully clothed. and he's fixed into position so his arms don't come down. stupid boy.

The rug is a proper woven rug and i got it in a sale for 50p! Keep your eye's peeled there are such bargains to be had, and it's perfect colours, green and gold what luck!

Much love

Freya xxx

P.S remember this is my first ever room so be kind! I know it's not perfect but from a distance it looks passable!

Dolls house flowers

 These are the bits i used, various cheap fake flowers which i bought from dollshouse emporium on sale, woohoo!

Various cheap pots, some flower soft and a wheel barrow to display them in.

 With this one i simply cut one or two strands off and twisted the ends so they were tied together and then glued it in a little pot, simples!

 One down! Lots to go!

 This one was thicker stemmed, i used only one.

 I used a larger pot this time and stuck the whole thing through the hole at the bottom and arranged it as i saw fit. I then dipped the whole flower in PVA and them into flower soft, see photo at the bottom.

 Same as the white, cut a bit off, twisled the ends stuck the whole lot in a shallow pot.

 ta da! the pot is actually the top part of a 1/12th Gardiner so i could also use the stand part as another pot.

 I cut this one close to the flowers and stuck it in a barrel pot and dunked it in PVA then pink flower soft.

 used tree of this one and again as it was thick stemmed shoved the whole lot through the hole and stuck in place and then one dry trimmed the ends flush with the bottom of the pot.

 These went into little pots.

 Here you can see the whole arrangement. it's important to get different heights to create visual interest.

 With the flash on!

And you've created a display costing less than £10! Well done and no fiddly paper punches and individual sticking petals and leaves on! I like this method as it's so fast, the whole lot took me about 30 mins to do and would be great left as a display for your garden or in a garden centre/ flower shop.

P.S the soil is made from tea straight from the tea bag sprinkled over PVA.

Much love,
Freya xxx

Petite Properties Greenhouse kit

At the London Dollhouse Miniatures fair i bought this beauty! Only £14.99 for a full 1/24th kit. The bloke who runs it is excellent had a good old moan about the world in a hilarious way with him!

So i got home and started making!

 This is the bits you get in the kit, they are all pre cut MDF and all the windows are included too, you just need to add Glue, paint and patience!

I spray painted the carcass silver 'cause it's a million times faster than painting with a brush AND it gives a uniform finish, AND you have to do it outside and it dried almost immediately. Excellent!

The silver was far to bright so i added a wash of acrylic paints, black, dark brown and a little olive mixed with a little water. I brushed this on with a cotton pad and wiped it off with the dry other end. This dulled it down and looked like it had been sitting in the garden for a while. I painted the bricks with burnt umber and a little dark brown.

The photo above shows the piece on the left with the wash and the piece on the right without, see how shiny and new the unwashed side looks? No good for a used greenhouse!

When you put the two together you get the full effect. I can see i need to paint a bit more on the bricks on the left. It's so simple to put together!

 A bad photo of the finished article on my window sill!

 I made it to be a copy of my grandpa's greenhouse when i was growing up and he always had grapes growing on the roof so mine does too!

The interior is filled with bags of compost, grow bags, hose, a dibber, packets of seeds, lawn seen, and some ready potted plants oh yeah and the huge tomatoes lol!

I hope you buy one and enjoy making it as much as i did!

www.petite-properties.com

Much Love,
Freya xxx