Staging for visitors

In two weeks I am giving my traditional Christmas party, and I anticipate that my guests will want to see my dollhouse. For a number of reasons, I didn't have this party last year, so the last my guests will have seen is this, two years ago:


The shell is not glued yet, there is no back, nor roof nor fronts, the doors and windows are not properly inserted, the stairs are leaned-to, the wallpaper is white-tacked, and most floors are simply covered with paper.

Yet my guests thought it was the most wonderful dollhouse they had seen.

Maybe they hadn't seen many. Or simply weren't looking closely.

If you don't look closely it does look cute. Small cute rooms full of small cure furniture and objects and dolls.


But this time, even if for my guests it may look the same, most of the superficial work is done. There will be plenty of things for them to admire, things I am proud of. Floors, stair railings, back corridor lights, flickering fireplaces, Adam ceilings, pleated curtains. Some may pay attention to the Chippendale furniture. Some may notice various details. Some will count cats.

Some will ask me how I made this or that. Most won't.

In anticipation of this visit I must make sure that everything is as much as it should be. That all pictures hang straight. That candles in chandeliers don't fall off. That all tiny objects on tables and chests are there, not lying on the floor around. That books are neat in bookcases (except those deliberately spread on the floor). That the door knobs haven't fallen off. That pots and pans and jars in kitchens and larders are stored away or arranged in an interesting disorder. That all dolls are upright, except those asleep in their beds.

That there is no ball of white tack in front of the grand stairs. Nor full-size tools left somewhere.

That lights work. That fronts still close and open (I must put in magnets!). That all unfinished spots I once left for later are finished.

Preferably, I should make five more sets of curtains, but I doubt I will have time. I may re-arrange the furniture and hang some more pictures.

The more I look at my house the more glad I am that I didn't postpone it until retirement.

Chippendale chest

After my struggle with the desk, I thought this one would be easy. When I was halfway through staining it occurred to me that I had never taken the before and after pictures, so now I have. I was using new stain because I had just finished the old faithful bottle of stain I bought in a hobby shop in Sweden over five years ago. This one came from an online shop, and although I would guess that mahogany was mahogany, it wasn't. I thought it was far too pink. I had to use at least three coats, and it was still too pink.

Then I made a fatal mistake. The instruction sheet has a warning: before you start, read the instructions carefully and make sure you understand every step of the process. In my hubris, I thought that with my fifth piece of advanced cabinet-making I understood every step. So I put in wrong bits for shelves. For some reason, each shelf must be made of two bits. I am sure there is a very good reason for this in full-size cabinet-making, and I am sure my expert friend Chris Scott would be able to explain to me exactly why it is important. I guess it has to do with aligning. And that's what made it such a frustrating job. It had been hard enough to put in three solid shelves - which was wrong. You might think that in a miniature it wouldn't make any difference. But just as a table top must be made with several panels, so a shelf must obviously be made of two bits. I think my blood pressure sky rocketed that evening.

Finally the frame was assembled, and making the drawers with their tiny handles and keyholes was a joy.

Here it is in its room. I will fill the drawers with bedlinen and other odds and ends. You can see that the stain is not the same, but maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe not all furniture was exactly the same.  .

Dollhouse Christmas

The only recurrent change I make in my Victorian house is Christmas decorations. I always have a tree in my 1:1 life, and I use a reasonable amount of decorations, but it is fun to make miniature Christmas things. Four years ago was the first Christmas season for my dollhouse, and to begin with I needed a tree. At that point I was still exploring miniature resources in and around Cambridge so I wasn't sure where to find a tree or something recyclable to make a tree. Finally I found an incredibly ugly tree in a local superstore, which I improved by painting.

I made the ornaments with junk jewellery and beads. The present  is a small wooden block wrapped in paper. 

This is a Christmas-decorated living room. The large boxes are cut from Dollhouse and Miniature magazine that always has some nice patterns in their Christmas issue. The Christmas cards also come from it, although you can take any seasonal magazine or catalogue. I made other decorations as well.

 

 Of course there is a lot of cooking and baking going on before Christmas so last year I made a baking board and let the little maid make gingerbread.



At 1:1 Christmas parties, I collect junk from crackers. Perfect to make Christmas miniatures with.