Wee House Craftalong-Ongoing 2011-Forever!

[Green Gypsy]

This is so exciting! I found a house making kit at Goodwill for $5! The crazy thing is that the kit is from a store a couple of blocks from my house (The little doll company in Toronto, if anyone knows about it) and it retails for $60! What a find! As soon as I saw the kit I thought of the houses you made Knickertwist. I'm so joining this craft a long!

What type of paint do you use and do you prim the wood before painting?

The kit I bought was missing the instructions, so I went on the manufactures website where I was able to download them. The house I have is called buttercup doll house.
http://www.greenleafdollhouses.com/
 

That is so awesome you found it for $5.00! I'm using the Greenleaf buttercup kit as well, I found it on amazon for $27 that includes shipping.

[vixen72]

I just saw that link...  Going to the library to print....I'm thinking of a Fairy house or my DREAM Crafting Boutique...Or something log cabinish or a fall theme, oh winter would be nice as well...Decisions decisons decisions...

[lvl0rg4n]

Morgan -- when I read the first post, I thought you meant that you were covering the upstairds floor of your *actual* home with painted scrabble tiles.  I thought -- whoa, that's SERIOUS crafting!

The effect looks great on the wee house, too!

How did you do the "hardwood" floor?

Haha. I am crazy, but not THAT crazy. I could barely stand doing an entire mini floor.
I bought some of the Loew-Cornell Woodsies Sticks which are like the popsicle sticks but without the rounded edges. They have them at Joann's, Michael's, and Wal-mart. If I could go back and do them again, I wouldn't be lazy and I'd cut them into pieces and stagger them. I painted them with watered down brown acrylic and then really watered down black along the edges of each stick.
Check out this post: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=360823.0 for a bit of a tutorial using stain. again, I just used acrylic.

lvl0rg4n, I love the diamond floor! I may have to do something similar for one of my rooms. 

badpuppy, those bricks in that tutorial look amazing, but I don't think I would have the patience for it.  I was thinking about using polymer clay and seeing if I could find one of those brick stamps I have seen cake decorators use for my chimney.

I love it too! It's just scrapbook paper with a thick layer of Krylon Triple Thick on it. It's super shiny in person and looks like glass or something.

[RoaneFaery]

So I went to the Michael's near the airport yesterday to pick a house up. (Thanks for the tip about which Michael's in Portland had them!)  I of course never start with easy things do I picked up the more ornate three story Victorian dollhouse (although not the fantasy one as I am not that insane.)  I got it all punched yesterday and dry fit together. I then took it back apart and have started staining and painting pieces.  

I do want to go steampunk workshop with mine so I thought the Victorian house would make more sense.

My one question is what scale are these houses are?  1/2" scale? or smaller than that?
And what scale is the furniture?  I would have picked that set up but they didn't have any.

And I will totally use that brick tutorial for my chimney.

[Edited to add]
I looked around on line at some dollhouse sites and they were saying these are close to 1/2" or 1:24 scale.

[lvl0rg4n]

So I went to the Michael's near the airport yesterday to pick a house up. (Thanks for the tip about which Michael's in Portland had them!)  I of course never start with easy things do I picked up the more ornate three story Victorian dollhouse (although not the fantasy one as I am not that insane.)  I got it all punched yesterday and dry fit together. I then took it back apart and have started staining and painting pieces.   

I do want to go steampunk workshop with mine so I thought the Victorian house would make more sense.

My one question is what scale are these houses are?  1/2" scale? or smaller than that?
And what scale is the furniture?  I would have picked that set up but they didn't have any.

And I will totally use that brick tutorial for my chimney.

You're in Portland?! Have you participated in the Meet Up thread on the City Guides board?!

I think the victorian will be a lot of fun for a steampunk theme. The Victorian house is quite a bit smaller than 1/2 scale. The punch out furniture wouldn't fit well anyways. I ran out into the garage and took a picture of my partially put together Victorian house and partially put together cottage. You can see that the floors are nearly the same height, but the cottage is sooo much wider. Polymer clay and Woodsies are going to be your friend for making furniture and stuff.



Make sure you do ALL of your decorating before you put the house together for good. The Victorian was the first one I did and I glued it all together before doing any painting or wall papering and I pretty much gave up on it in its current state. It was super frustrating!

[irid3sc3nt]

I'm still not sure on a theme, either creepy cryptozoology or Alice in Wonderland American Mcgee style.....

American McGee Alice in Wonderland would be pretty fun.  It's so creepy!

[cyndy225]

I would just like to let you know that you all are a bad influence! I swear I was all set to start on Christmas gifts... Oh well, I went ahead and picked up the Victorian style Creatology. I've got the house dry fitted and all of the rooms marked, but I need advice on a theme. To save time, stop reading now, to offer your ever appreciated advice, keep going. 

I'm torn between:
Serial killer's house: pictures of "idols" on the walls, "meat" cooking in the kitchen, old victims and extra torture tools in the attic, blood cleaning in the bathroom, new victim in the bedroom, the kids watching Barney in the living room...I know I could do a good job, but it would be extremely disturbing, don't think I could keep it up except for Halloween.
Classic haunted house: think Rose Red and The Haunted, possibly parts of Pan's Labyrinth
Tim Burton homage: whimsical but realistic, the cartoon parts would be portrayed as toys (Zero stuffy!) or pictures. Fun theme but, oddly, I think I might feel limited and cliche.
Witch's house: not scary, but makes for a good year-round theme even with obvious Halloween touches. More personal to me, but probably less interesting for the boyfriend. Also a chance to throw in random fantasy touches.

[irid3sc3nt]

I would just like to let you know that you all are a bad influence! I swear I was all set to start on Christmas gifts... Oh well, I went ahead and picked up the Victorian style Creatology. I've got the house dry fitted and all of the rooms marked, but I need advice on a theme. To save time, stop reading now, to offer your ever appreciated advice, keep going. 

I'm torn between:
Serial killer's house: pictures of "idols" on the walls, "meat" cooking in the kitchen, old victims and extra torture tools in the attic, blood cleaning in the bathroom, new victim in the bedroom, the kids watching Barney in the living room...I know I could do a good job, but it would be extremely disturbing, don't think I could keep it up except for Halloween.
Classic haunted house: think Rose Red and The Haunted, possibly parts of Pan's Labyrinth
Tim Burton homage: whimsical but realistic, the cartoon parts would be portrayed as toys (Zero stuffy!) or pictures. Fun theme but, oddly, I think I might feel limited and cliche.
Witch's house: not scary, but makes for a good year-round theme even with obvious Halloween touches. More personal to me, but probably less interesting for the boyfriend. Also a chance to throw in random fantasy touches.

I would go with the witch's house.  If it would mean more to you and you are crafting for yourself (and taking all that time crafting) then I think you should do it.  If the bf wants an interesting house, he can always craft his own

[Ashgrim]

I didn't get the chance to work on my house today, but I wanted to share the house that first inspired me to want to do a haunted doll house. It's much fancier than what I'm doing but I want to do a similar theme:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebloggess/sets/72157627520056330/with/6081094127/

Happy crafting!

[anefariousimp]

I've glued and painted everything in my house together- I'm just trying to decide on my theme.  I'm torn between Alice in Wonderland or French style bakery!