29/11/08-Queen Anne

PICTURES (courtesy of my dear friend Faizz-all faults of the pictures are attributed solely to his camera and nothing to do with his skills) of the Queen Anne Dollhouse which I helped decorate for an event. This is a HUGE house with 13 rooms and dimensions at 50"W x 24"D x 49"H. My very very 1st attempt at miniature ID:

THE EXTERIOR: I spent about 6 hours doing up the exterior after I have finished all the interior. This house came assembled and painted. If it is up to me, the colours of the exterior will not be pink and blue. Too Barbie doll. There are however tons of tacky Singapore houses like this. So I guess this is "realistic".I feel that the decorations ended up quite small and the house did not look as festive as I had hoped. The exterior of the house was eventually lighted up with L.E.D amber lights and looked more "Christmasy". I will add pictures when I have them.

Some detailed shots of the Exterior:I hated these plastic rocking horses that were supposed to go in the baby room but I thought they went with the exterior quite well. Nonetheless, they ended up looking puny, especially at the mall.
The elf is so cute but again, it is too tiny for the exterior. I only had 3 elves or I would have lined more of them on the banister.

This Glamour Maid is my favourite creation for the exterior. Can you tell that her lashes were made with the bristles from the elves' brooms? The white part of her eyes are flowers. Her hat is the cap of the glue stick which we had used up. Her dress is in fact an old sock. The owner of this house is so filthy rich, her SnowMaid only uses made-to-order stuff.
This part of the exterior is just outside the White Chamber. This is the only room that has a door leading to the exterior. The wonderful foliages are from Daiso. They came in a bed of about 100 pieces for just S$2.00!! With dashes of scarlet acrylic paint, they are immediately transformed into Poinsettia.

THE INTERIOR: I spent 48 hours (6p.m. Saturday, 29/11/08-6p.m. Monday,1/12/08) doing up the interior of this house. In that 48 hours I rested for 3-4 hours. I had to rest because my real house gets "attacked" by bees (who are attracted to lights) promptly at about 5-6 am in the mornings. I had no choice but to switch off all the lights and go to bed till 7am when dawn breaks and I can work without lights.
At the end of the 1st 24 hours, I could no longer bend down without hurting my back and my planta fasciitis acted up again and I could not walk properly on Monday morning.I took leave from work that day and carried on working on the house till I finished about 99% of it on Monday evening.

The Pink Baby Room:I had to put up pictures and "huge" flower puffs on the left wall because the wallpaper there was damaged. The curtain and the net over the cot were made from an old blouse.The teddy bears on the board is actually a hair clip belonging to my 8 year old niece.
Plastic flowers on the net were cut from a bunch and stuck on the net with glue. 95% of the Persian rugs and carpets in the house were printed from various books I own on carpets. Yes, they are made of paper. The white "sheepskin" rug is from last year's Christmas hat completely destroyed now for this house.

The Boys' Blue Room:There are some things I really liked about this room. First there are the creepers and the spider on the wall. The creepers were cut from a bunch of plastic flowers with brownish stems and stuck on the wall with white BLU-Tack. The spider was an old toy I found. In this whole project, BLU-Tack has to be my best friend and the reason why I could finish doing the house in such a short time.
I also made a miniature of my favourite soft toy called "The Black Sheep" from one of my favourite "girly" artist called Carrie Chau (at the side of the window).

I am quite proud of the fan which I made from cardboard and bits and parts I found. The blades of the fan were made from the mahogany strip flooring material as were the blinds on the boys' windows.

Can you tell the boys have put up their baby sister's picture on the dartboard?

We all love our lego, even our dolls!

The Drama Mama Masterbedroom :
This is the room I "transformed" the most. Actually the master bedroom comprises of 2 rooms. The one inside became the attached bathroom (see close-up picture below).
I say "transform" because I "re-upholstered" all the furniture in this room. They actually came white with pink and white gingham everything, from pillows to sheets to the vanity table top, side table cover, stool cover and even armchair upholstery!! Will your husband want to sleep in a room covered in pink and white checks? Hell no right?

Quite by chance, MarJ, the friend & housemate & dollhouse-event-organiser bought matching cloth (with the wallpaper) from Daiso which became the headboard, a cushion for the armchair and seat cover for the stool. The same old sock for SnowMaid was used for the armchair. Guess you can tell I can't sew for nuts so I needed cloth that just fold well. or can be BLU-Tacked. Part of the sock also became a hobo handbag I made for the lady of the house. See the black "lump" in front of the bed with jewelled handle? Clearer picture of the handbag is the one above.The best thing in this room has to be the chandelier made from an old brooch that MarJ"donated" to the house. I also used a broken photo stand as a decor piece placed behind the bed. The photo frames for this "tree" are hung on the walls of the 2nd floor landing/hallway. I never knew pink/white gingham can go with black and red but I guess they don't look so bad together. The green flower pot is of course a bead from an unwanted necklace. The other parts of this necklace became earthen pots for the kitchen. A very pretty stud ear-ring became a decorative piece for the vanity stool.

Above are 2 close-ups of the bathrooms. There is a sink at the side which cannot be seen. I made matching curtains and towels (from the flooring material used in the 2nd floor hallway) for the bathroom. A big round crimson rug for the bedroom was cut out from a felt paper. The red patterned bedsheet is also paper which explains why it is not folding well. Black bedsheet, pillow cases and side table cloth are made from black felt cloth and fuchsia leather string used for wristbands. If you look at the bathtub carefully, you can see a bubble bath being prepared.

The Bathroom Downstairs:

This is the 1st room I did on the 2nd floor and I finished it in about 15 minutes. Could have been faster if the shower curtain rod had fitted nicely between the walls. I had to use BLU-Tack at the edge and dabbed them with gold ink to make them look like porcelain heads. Ceiling lamp was made from the cap of an unwanted bottle.
"Shampoo" on Daddy's hair is the frost spray from a can and the bubbles' from the bubble wrap that came with the house. Same bubble wrap in the master bedroom's bath which Mummy will be using shortly. A very small bathroom and anyone in the hallway can see you in the buff cos it does not have a door.

The X'mas Hallway:

The hallway turned out better than I had hoped. I was a little stumped by how I am supposed to do up a hallway with maroon carpet and pastel green walls and thenX'mas! So this is the one room on the upper floor with the tree and Xmas decor. All the rooms have no doors so I had to make green curtain panels for the Xmas wreaths. Daddy also had more privacy when he is taking his bath.
I also found out that 1) tiffany lamps work well in mis-matched green rooms. 2) impractical photo frames fit really nicely in dollhouses and 3) socks make great shawls and blankets. Dusty is going up to the boys' room cos Grandpa is not at his favourite spot reading his papers. He's in the kitchen cooking up a storm.

The White Chamber-Tasha's Room

This is what my own bedroom most resembles when I am in a "white" phase. For this room, I spent akmost an hour on the curtains. This room has 7 windows!! Of course, I made a mess of the curtains since I can't sew. I then made the screen with cardboard and an old lacy bra which nicely hide the awful curtains. This is the most special room in the whole house because its the only one with a door to the exterior. See earlier picture of its exterior. That's why Xerxes, my cat, lives in this room. Even my 3 year old nephew recognised the cat when he saw him sneaking out while Tasha , his sister is behind the screen changing.

Can you see the shadow of a grown up Tasha behind the screen. She's dyed her hair blond, much to her mum's chagrin. The dolls that were supposed to come with this house did not arrive in time. I had to use a spare child doll, BLU-Tack her behind the screen only showing her hair to make it seem like it was a grown doll. The dolls finally arrived after the houses were put up at the mall. So there were more people in this house later.
Tasha also enjoys a "real" carpet instead of a paper one cos that's where she does her reading (see her trashy novels on the carpet?)

Xerxes' and Tasha's beds side by side with pretty white bead curtain made from an old necklace.

The Study:
I wanted to create a library/study filled with books and this has to be the toughest room of all Mind you, I did not even make the books. They are from Jim's Printables printed and folded mainly by MarJ. They are mostly miniature law books from the Halsbury's series.

The most laborious thing was making the shelves. It was a pain cutting the shelves from cardboard boxes the furniture came in. I then had to cut strips from the oak wood "flooring" and tape them to the edges of the board to make them look like wooden shelves. Getting them "nailed" to the wall is a nightmare. If you look at the picture above and the uppermost shelves, you can see BLU-Tack sticking out. Faizz thinks they look like wasp nests (my real home has tons) and are therefore quite realistic.Can you tell the papers on the floor are newspapers? They are made by cutting the "spine" of real newspapers and then glueing bits of the classifieds on the top to complete the look. Faizz thought they are tax forms(!!?) and this is the room of an accountant /lawyer in the business of tax evasion. Can you tell he is a CPA and this is the year end? Is it any wonder this is also his favourite room?

I spent quite a lot of time making shelves out of 3 unwanted miniature drawers (behind the monitor) only to have it totally blocked when I placed the desk, chair and computer. The library is also the only room that can see through to the Drawing Room behind if you strain your eyes. Ceiling lamp is made from an old watch. Better view in the 1st picture.The Ming vases and the fans are printed from books in my own big library. I have a wealth of reference books that I collected over the years. For this dollhouse,we used books that I have not opened in years! According to MarJ who did all the printing, the difficult thing is to find pictures of the right dimension and in full frontal view.

FoyerThis was to be the least cluttered room but alas when I saw how "empty" it was, I could not bear it.
So I placed a table in the centre front of the room, put "Mosche" under the table and planted a huge fern at the right hand corner.
I also decided to grow pots of flowers on the stairs.

The coat and hat (except Santa's hat and beard) were made by "pressing" black cloth into shape with BLU-Tack. You will find out soon enough why Santa's hat is there. The gold tarnished vase is the cap of a miniature perfume bottle flanked by 2 beads. More paper cut out plates on the wall.

The KitchenThis kitchen looks small but is actually quite big (2 rooms). This kitchen has 2 stove, 2 sink and 2 refrigerators. It is also the dining area. For a huge house, the dining area is quite pathetic but that's the only dining set we have.
Can you make out the 2 stoves in the background and that sink against the wondow at right angle to the stoves?
As you can see Grandpa has just placed a stuffed turkey in the oven (door open). Grandpa/off duty Santa is a great multi-tasker. In between roasting, he's also preparing and cleaning the vegetables in the other sink,putting his shopping into the fridges (by the way, empty nail polish bottles make great glass containers (on top of fridge)
washing the dishes and munching his favourite snack, all at once.
My nieces helped me make the fireplace for the kitchen by painting the blocks.

Piano Room



Fairly standard room and not as dramatic as I would like it to be. After the pictures were taken, the human arrived and my friend made a dracula-like character in a penguin suit who became the pianist. She also made "Beyonce" in a gorgeous animal skin long gown who became mistress of the house. She was placed next to the piano, singing "I saw mummy kissing Santa Claus". My friend also made the chandelier fom her necklace. Tall matchbox and loads of Persian carpets liven up the room.

Living Room

Right behind the piano room is the living room with a great firepace.


Views of the living room from the baywindow.

The Invisible Drawing Room
I call this the invisible drawing room because it can only be seen if you open this side bay window (2nd floor) or peer really , really hard through the study



This is the last room I did, by which time, there were very few furniture and furnishings left.. So this room is sparse compared to the rest.At the mall, the door will not be opened so you can only see the room through the bay window.I therefore try to pretty up the window more and place a long reading table near the bay window with books and a pot of flowers on the table.

CONCLUSION:
If this house cannot be sold and by some tiny chance, my friend decides I can keep it, then I will repaint/re-brick/re-stone the exterior, re-carpet all the floors, re-wallpaper every room, maybe re-shingle/ re-shape the roof and DEFINITELY redo all the interiors.