Small makeovers

Today was an exceptionaly lucky charity-shop day.

 

I don't really need the kitchen set; in fact, I have another one like this, only in darker wood. But could you resist the temptation? Baskets are always good to have, not to mention frames. And the napkin ring - I saw immediately that it was a ceiling lamp! And exactly the kind of lamp I need right now for the gentlemen's smoking room.




I just need to add the ceiling rose, and if I can figure out how to attach a tea light it will be marvelous. By the way, the tiny whisky bottle on the smoking table has real whisky in it - a souvenir from Scotland.

I also made a quick transformation of an ugly pin into a lovely portrait frame.

 

Alice in Wonderland room box

I have never made room boxes based on literature (except Lord Asriel's study, and it was pure imagination since it is not described in the novel). Since I am a children's literature scholar it may seem natural to make scenes from children's books, but for some reason I don't find it tempting, maybe because it's too obvious or too limiting or whatever.

In September I am doing a workshop for teachers in conjunction with a big international conference on Alice in Wonderland. The workshop will be focused on perception of size and scale, and what can be better as a point of departure than a miniature scene? 

For most of her time in Wonderland, Alice is three inches high, which is approximately 1:12 scale. This is apparently not a coincidence, but reflects spatial cognition, that is, the ability of our brain to understand size and proportion. Our favourite miniature scale is within the cognitive “comfort zone”. It ensures that the miniature world is still recognisable and comprehensible. If the scale is significantly smaller, psychology says, it demands a considerable cognitive effort. We miniature makers know it by intuition. If we work with smaller scales, it takes more effort to "see" the scale. 

Anyway, I agreed to do this workshop some time ago, and as a first step I took an empty wine box (formerly nursery, formerly yarn shop) and put in some random doors I had from various projects. This is what the text says: 

Alice “found herself in a long, low hall, which was lit up by a row of lamps hanging from the roof. There were doors all round the hall, but they were all locked; and when Alice had been all the way down one side and up the other, trying every door, she walked sadly down the middle, wondering how she was ever to get out again”.

 

 The box was the right shape: long with low ceiling. I put in a 1:12 doll, but I also found a tiny doll - dollhouse-in-the-dollhouse doll - to represent Alice when she shrinks to fifteen inches, which in our scale is just over an inch. I also made a glass table with a bottle labeled "Drink me". 

Then I didn't do anything for a long time. I needed a larger doll to represent Alice when she grows to nine feet, or 0.75 feet in scale. She is taller than the ceiling, and I wanted to convey the sense of claustrophobia, the horror of being stuck in a small space, that is repeated throughout the book. I also realised that white doors on white walls didn't look good. It was tempting to paint doors in different colours, but I thought it would be too patchy and distracting, a beach-hut feeling. Instead, I tried various colours on the walls. And I also made "a row of lamps hanging from the roof". The lamps are tops of eyedrop containers. I made some additional doors in my three-layer technique.

 

Of course the three Alices do not co-exist, but a room box can tell a story containing several episodes. This is the first episode, featuring the middle doll:

“Suddenly she came upon a little three-legged table, all made of solid glass; there was nothing on it except a tiny golden key, and Alice's first thought was that it might belong to one of the doors of the hall; but, alas! either the locks were too large, or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted!”

I have hidden the little door in the corner, and it is easy to miss it because the large doors will attract more attention. You need to adjust your scaling, just as Alice. Unfortunately, Alice is too tall to go through the tiny door, but when she drinks from the magic bottle and shrinks, she is just the right size, like the smallest doll. But sadly, she has left the key on the table. I put the little doll under the table to show how futile her attempts to get the key are. Luckily, she finds a cake that says "Eat me" and grows to nine feet... and so it goes on. 

The three dolls do not look alike so I had to make them look more alike, and the only way was to give them similar clothes. I didn't want to follow the stereotypical Disney-Alice image with a blue dress and white apron (it is also historically incorrect). There are some illustrated versions of Alice that portray her in a green dress, and I had a nice piece of green fabric. This was a good test of scale! The big doll's dress was child's play, and it was easy to trim it neatly with lace. The middle doll took more time and effort, especially since I didn't want to take off her clothes and ruin them, so I put the new dress on top of the old one. The tiny doll's dress took five attempts, and I am still not quite happy. But at least I think you can see that it is supposed to be the same character. 

I have added some Alice-related items to the scene: chess pieces, the Queen of hearts, mice in different scales, a clock. I wanted to have a looking glass, but I cannot see where I could fit it in. I have some time to work on it. The workshop participants will be asked to create their own room boxes inspired by Alice's growing and shrinking. It wil be exciting to see what they come up with.

Oil lamps

A small project inspired by Patricia King, who calls it a pile-up method, or "simply glue". I don't know what kind of glue she uses, but this is far from simple because the small bits won't stay. Nothing is ever simple. Anyway:

Left to right: the first one is Dutch pewter, bought at a carboot sale for 30p. The next is an expensive, but worthless LED lamp from an online dollhouse shop. The third is a lamp I made seven years ago, among my very first things. It's a chess piece and a pencil cap. Finally, the "simple pile-up", still a bit lopsided, as I now see (photos are revealing!). A button, a smaller button with the central bit removed, a bead with a watch winder glued on, a belt eyelet, a bead cap, a bead, another bead cap and a bit of a plastic tube from a soap pump. It took me about an hour to make, with several attempts and a lot of bad language. Worthwhile?

More furniture improvements

Now that I have figured out how to make the kit furniture nicer it's just a matter of patience. I made a table for the drawing room

A bookshelf

with book rows cut from a magazine

An armchair

 

After which I gained so much confidence that I decided I could make something that was missing from the kit. I took the side pieces from another armchair and used the empty template to make the seat and the back. I used a cheesebox, and because I don't have any elaborate tools I simply cut it with scissors.

 I don't think my sofa is significantly inferior to the one mising from the kit.

 Of course it still looks more like a park bench than a sofa, but wait...

Here is the whole set. I stained and varnished the furniture, and unfortunately the stain didn't stick where there was some glue left on the sofa: there is an ugly patch that I will do something about. The ceiling lamp is a toy from a Christmas cracker, and the table lamp is a chess piece with a plastic tube cap. The carpet is paper, cut from a catalogue and fringed all round
 

Modern drawing room

The remaining room in my modern house is the ground-floor drawing room. The front door of the house opens into it, which is not uncommon in English houses, and there is not much I can do about it. I didn't want the door to open into the kitchen.

 

This is a very early stage, as you can see the empty kitchen through the opening. I painted the walls yellow, but the floor is still covered with paper. The heater is made from a candy box. I made the sofa from cardboard, covered with fabric. The coffee table is the lid of a souvenir box made from California readwood - the souvenir shop swore that no tree was injured. 

The standard lamp is made from bits of an old fridge shelf, with eyedrop containers for lampshades. The base comes from some old toy. The Penguin books come from a party game; a friend gave me the leftovers after Christmas. The self-adhessive covers are wrapped over a piece of cardboard. I only chose titles that I liked. The picture on the wall is cut from a magazine, and the frame is made of grill sticks.



Although I don't like fitted carpets in my own home I got a bit of furniture fabric from a friend, which made a nice carpet for this room. I put in a mirror because mirrors always create an interesting effect in a dollhouse. The tiffany lamp in front of the mirror came with a lot from ebay, and I don't even remember where the table and chair come from. Some further features of this room include a coffee table, which is another upside-down carndlestick, and a television set, made from a plastic jewellery box, in the same manner I made the computer screen. The remote is cut from a catalogue.

Making a chandelier

The chandelier is made from a part of an old petroleum lamp, bought at a flea market. The chains come from my junk box. They are fastened by tiny metal thread.

 

The silver tray is one you use to put your silver ladle on. Real sterling silver. I cut the plant from a plastic Christmas decoration. The little square plastic tray came with a magazine. I have seen them repeatedly on eBay.