Chippendale day bed

I have made two more pieces from my incredible Chippendale bargain. One is called a day bed, which I think is an unglamorous name for this beautiful piece, but if this is the correct term, then that's it. There isn't a lot to show because it was just like making chairs. The only tricky part was aligning the back.

As with the sofa, the fabric provided was incredibly ugly. I cannot imagine how someone making these wonderful kits has so poor taste in fabric. Luckily, I had a bit that matched the chairs.

This piece fits well with the chairs and the whole reception room.


(The floor is still not finished, but progressing).


I am less satisfied with this mirror. For some reason, it comes upside down on this page, and I cannot do anything about it. Turn your device 180 degrees.

It was very difficult to mitre, and half of the trim was broken so I have just glued on what still looked like trim. This is the only x-acto piece so far where the kit was damaged. But then I got what I paid for. Incidentally, the manual says that original Chippendale frames were asymmetrical so I can pretend it's intentional.

Anyway, I now know the difference between a mirror and a looking glass. I had always thought they were synonyms, but apparently not. A mirror is anything reflective (for instance, a bronze mirror) while a looking glass must have glass. So many useful things you learn from miniature-making.

Ornate mirror

A quick and easy project (while another chimney breast is drying). I bought all these things at a local jumble sale today.

It has been a while since I discovered the potenitals of junk jewellery, but here are some obvious things: beads, chains, earring fittings. Combs can be made into interesting chairs. But I started with the easiest:

 

Massacre the (incredibly ugly) pocket mirror. Remove the centre bit from the buckle. Paint the frame gold.

Mirror frames

This is a very simple project. I always buy small cheap picture frames, and today I found some good ones at a flea market. 

These can be used both for pictures and mirrors, and I needed some mirrrors for my Georgian house. I use tin foil for mirrors, and for a period house it's just as well that they are darkish.

My usual problem with heavy frames is that you cannot fix them with blue tack or sticky dots. But these frames had fixture for standing which I used to attach a piece of wire. 

This is what it looks like in the interior:

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Modern bathroom

I built the bathroom on th same floor as the bedroom, with a little hall in between. It took me a long time to decide how to make the bathroom walls because solid walls would make the whole floor too heavy and crammed. Finally I used a CD box, which became quite an interesting solution.

Just as I started on the bathroom I found this marble bathtub in a thrift shop. The wash stand is a makeup box glued onto a plastic tube. On the right you can see that I have started tiling the floor, the tiles cut from a fancy shopping bag.

 

The tiling is similar on the floor and the wall. I made the shower from two spice-jar lids (the lid for peppar has small holes in it, just right), and the taps are plastic beads. I later moved the tub and the shower into my Victorian house because I found a fabulous bathroom set in a shop on Portobello Road in London.

It is an original Barton set (which means it is wrong scale, since Barton is 1:16, but all scales are slightly wrong in this house). It was in porr shape and I strongly dislike the 1980s green so I painted it a bit more daring - but also authentic: I have seen exactly this colour combination on Barton bathrooms. It was a very delicate job since I didn't want to remove the taps and the toilet seat.

Some further details in this bathroom: the little dressing table is made from an unidentifable plastic object, the same I used for the kitchen table. The scissors, razor and comb come from party crackers. I made the mirror holders from clothes hooks. The toothbrush mug is a ballpoint pen cap, and the brushes are made with tiny bits of Velcro. The toilet brush, which you cannot see very well behind the tub, is a makeup brush in a plastic medicine-bottle cap. The towel rings are made from the sealing rings in cooking-oil bottles.

Art gallery

The mantelpiece I described in the previous post gave me the idea of an art gallery. I had a rather shallow wine box where I couldn't make anything that demanded depth, but lots of pictures on the walls would be just right.

I made wallpaper from ordinary coloured printer paper and used self-adhesive paper border for cornice. The floor was temporary when I made it over a year ago, but it is still there. I made the mirror frame from grill sticks to match the decoration on the mantelpiece. The angels on the mantelpiece come from Christmas crackers; they were a hideous blue-green colour so I painted them gold. The angels over the mirror come from a hobby shop. The two oval picture frames are also from a hobby shop, but generally the point of having an art gallery was to try various ways of making picture frames. The one above the oval frames is made by placing the picture (cut from a magazine and glued onto card) on a piece of tin foil and folding it over the edges. It creates an effect of a heavy gilded frame. The round frame on the left is cut from a very special Russian candy box: I have another frame like this in my Victorian house, but I will probably never find this candy again.

 

Candy boxes are excellent material for all kinds of things. Here is another one, perfect for a picture frame. 

 

Otherwise, using lolly sticks is the easiest way to make simple frames.

That said, who wants a simple frame if the point of the box room is to make as many different frames as possible? I'll show some more in the next post.

 

New bedroom

I start with the bedroom. I was stingy and recycled the old wallpaper, but I didn't have enough for the bedroom, so this is from the old drawing room. The top rooms have quite high ceilings that go well beyond the front of the cabinet (and were terribly uncomfortable to paint), so I decided to leave the upper part of the walls white, which was not uncommon at the time. I used furniture ribbon for cornice. I also recycled the old paper floors, but one day I will make real floors as I have done in the other rooms. The door opens into the bathroom, just as in the old house. The new detail in the bedroom is the wardrobe, or armoire, a word I didn't know until recently. It was a hard decision to replace my own creation with a more elaborate one, and I only did it because the armoire came as a part of a huge lot I bought from ebay. Since I keep moving things around, perhaps this piece will move elsewhere and the old pretty wardrobe come back. Of the other details, pay attention to the bed warmer. The handle is a little stick you get to stir your coffee on a plane. This one, from Spanair, had a round blade. I saw the form at once. The pan itself is a champagne cap.

I got the hatbox with a tiny bag and gloves from a friend. The Persian carpet is cut from a souvenir pencil case. The boot is possibly from Barbie, and the bootjack is an unidentifiable piece of metal salvaged from a pile of rubbish when we refurbished the 1:1 kitchen. The baby cot is a very recent addition, from the same lot as the wardrobe. I think I will paint it white at some point.

 I bought the mirror in a thrift shop because it would be quite difficult, although not impossible to make. I should probably paint it white as well. I am very proud of the new modesty screen which I had been planning for years and only figured out recently how to make. It is a broken fan from a flea market that I simply glued onto a piece of white card. The little sconce of the wall is from Dollhouse Enporium and works. But the chandelier I made myself.

 

The metal bit used to be a part of an ancient lady purse, or ridicule, with a silk bag attached. It belonged to my great-grandmother, and I cherished it for many years. The fabric was falling apart so I finally decided to sacrifice it. I added plastic beads for decoration and used a junk chain. There is a tiny bulb in the lamp. 

I am tremendously proud of this piece that has recently replaced the old dressing table. Not only is it more elegant, it it also much more imaginative. For legs, I used clothes-pegs (after a few failed attempts with chopsticks). The top is still, after all these years, the venetian blind, and I decorated the sides with bits of the same old lacey placemat. The mirror is a miniature frame, and the two drawers are mini building blocks with two pinheads for handles. Because of the size of the clothes-pegs, this piece is slightly larger than 1:12, but you cannot really tell when it is in the room, which now looks like this: 

The new doll has been around for a while, in fact, almost since we moved four years ago. I made her dress, using details from my old embroidered shirt. There still a lot of improvements and additions I can make to the bedroom, but it is complete.

Putting up walls

I have now come to the moment, about a month after I first started, when I had to decide whether I wanted more rooms in my house. I didn't have to, but it was a challenge. I had to make a decision because I also wanted to have floors and wallpaper. Reluctantly, I made some purchases from ebay (again, I will show eventually how I made much more intereseting floors), but I used my imagination when I made the wall between the dining room and the drawing room. The dining room wallpaper is self-adhesive shelf paper.

And, viewed from the other side

And the full view of the drawing room

There are quite a few new details that need description. I wasn't confident about regular dollhouse lighting so I got Christmas tree lights. Viewed from the five-year perspective, it was highly unprofessional and quite ugly, but I was pleased then. I painted the light-holders and even the wiring. The mirror was among the very first things I made, even before I had a mitre box, therefore it isn't very neat, but I have kept it for sentimental reasons. I made the coffee table from a bit of my favourite venetian blind with four chess pieces for legs. The tea set is from ebay, as is the table lamp, made from a copper coin. But I made the chandelier.

I saw when I took the picture that it was a bit lopsided. But I made it myself, following the instructions from a book by Eva Malmsten. It is a quite a job because you need to keep the threads apart. I will show in a separate post how to do it. The large circle is a bracelet and the small a matching ring (both junk). The crystals are beads which I have threaded on copper wire. The hanging icicles are Christmas decoration.