Budget miniature-making

As I have stated repeatedly, I am a recycler and do not buy expensive craft paper when I can use old document folders. But some materials still have to be bought: paint, glue, varnish; and I prefer to buy them cheap. I am also always looking for inexpensive materials intended for something else than miniature-making.

This is what I bought the other day from £1 store.

The lining paper, 4 square meters (!) will be used to paste wallpaper on. Much easier than hanging wallpaper direct on the walls, especially if you also make panels and rails. The self-adhesive shelf paper will be used for flooring, and I am already making what I believe will be stunning floors. Watch this space. The jar of varnish is simply a cheap jar of varnish, fully sufficient for my purposes. Likewise, paint: much, much cheaper than in hobby shops and just as good. The three pens are scratch markers, used for concealing scratches in furniture, I have already tested: they will be perfect for staining wooden floors in three different shades. Paper doilies will make excellent ceiling decorations. And you can never have enough of sandpaper.

Nursery

To do a nursery is fun because there is room for imagination, as Anne of Green Gables puts it. I had some things that fit into a nursery, but some other things I had to make or re-make.

The table and chairs are from an old doll house. The crib used to be plain wood, so I painted it white and decorated with bits of lacey plastic placemat (a material that has proved extremenly versatile). It also decorates the shelf, which I made very simply from two building blocks and wooden strips Most of the toys are mini Christmas decorations, but I made the boat on wheels. The teddy bear comes from a flea market.

For some reason I also wanted a bed. I think it was mainly to decorate it with lace. I used chopsticks for bedposts.

Recycling tips for miniature-makers

The most important source of inspiration for me, at the early stages of my miniature making, and until today, has been the Swedish miniaturist Eva Malmsten. She has written several books about dollhouses, all about recycling, using your dollhouse eyeglasses and see possibilities where other people just see rubbish. It's all very nice to have expensive pieces made by professionals, and every now and then it's fun to make something from kit, but the most exciting thing about miniature making, at least for me, is turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, extracting an object from its old, useless shell, putting together incompatible objects into something new. This is creative. I cannot draw or paint, but I discovered that I was quite good at making small things. Yet without Eva's brilliant tips I would not have discovered the Marvelous World of Rubbish. Here are some things that come handy for miniature making.

 

Sometimes you see at once that buttons make picture frames and jar lids, that corks make bowls, that eye-drop containers make bottles, IKEA pegs make furniture legs, bottlecaps make pie forms, chess pieces make lamp stands. But sometimes you look at something for ages, literally for years, before you suddenly see exactly how it can be used. Or it can be the other way round: I would be looking for something to make a door handle, or a sugar bowl, or a TV screeen, or a towel rack. And I go through my supplies and find something unexpected. It is fun to copy something from a book or from the web, but the most fun is coming up with something you have never seen before. I will be showing lots of miniatures I have made from rubbish, and oftentimes they are not in any way inferior to what you can buy, and they are always unique.

Getting materials

The next day, December 29, my daugher and I went to a huge flea market in Stockholm. Now that I had read the clever books I knew what I was looking for, and with your miniature eyeglasses you start seeing the possibilities. Take wooden candlesticks: turn them upside down, cut off bits if needed, glue together bits from different candlesticks, and here are your round tables with elegant turned stands. 

The best thing I found that day was a wooded venetian blind which I have to this very day used for furniture-making, rather than buying expensive materials from hobby shops. Remember: venetian blinds are indispensable for a miniature maker. I also found a box of wooden building blocks - another great thing for furniture making. I got an electic candlestick the use of which I will show presently, but among other things it contained copper wire. I got a load of photo frames. A bagful of metal buttons, to make lids, frames and candlesticks. And a little table in just the right scale, which the same evening became the beginning of the kitchen. 

But first I started a dining room with one of my new round tables

The tablecloth is a napkin, the bowls are for sushi soy sauce, the fruit are from some old potpourri, and the candlestick and the vase are just those many small silly things you don't know what to do with until you start making dollhouses.