My Dollshouse - part 14 (and Xmas vignettes)

I am now more determined than ever to finish off this house so I can move on to other projects-in-waiting. However, as always I do get distracted a bit, and I am also putting together my old Christmas vignettes.  They have suffered a lot of wear and tear over the years, so cleaning and repairing was my first job. 

My Christmas kitchen is without a stove.  I am therefore putting a Phoenix kit together that I have had for years.  I have not yet done a kit in metal, only plastic or wood, so this is a different challenge.  

So far I have cleaned and painted a few parts, but ran into problems, because I have to of the same parts for the sides and this missing a hole for the oven door handle.  I am going to look into that and let you know how I went.

all the pieces

waiting to be painted

painted in matt black

As for the dollshouse, I am still working on the bathroom.  I have decided I want venetian blinds for the bottom windows.  The top ones I may give a 'frosted' look, but need to look into that later.  I thought blinds only might look a bit boring, so I have added window sills, similar to the ones in the kitchen.  I may have one blind down and one half-way.  Will need to see how it looks first.

window sills added

prototype in paper

the real deal done with photographic paper

Since 'real' venetian blinds are not possible, because if the fine knotting work I would have to do, I have separated the slats with beads.  The idea I saw on the internet, but a while ago and cannot remember where. I have opted for photographic paper again as it is shiny and makes the slats look more realistic.

In the meantime I am still working on the various parts of furniture and decoration in the batheroom.  I have now finished the privacy screen.  Next, painted and drying while I am writing this is the shelving unit. There is also the light to be finished off and a towel rack.

privacy screen in parts

privacy screen finished

I have worked hard over the past few days and the bathroom is nearly finished.  I have added a shelving unit and a towel rack. I wasn't happy with the way the shelving unit looked side-on so I covered the ugly slots with veneer and painted it in the colour of the unit.  So much better.  I decorated the unit with strips and other parts of card-making stickers. The same for the towel rack. I am pleased with the look. 

Shelving unit with white decorations

The side with the ugly slots

The sides covered with veneer

The towel rack finished

I have dug out items that I have had for years and that were made with this bathroom in mind.  The toilet came with the dolls house.  The toilet roll holder, the scales and the laundry bag were a few of the first items I ever made back in 1998 when I had just started.  The toilet roll holder is a working one. The kerosine heater was a workshop of the dollshouse club and was made with the use of findings and other little items after which it was painted in grey gloss. 

Net a few pictures of the (near) finished bathroom.  The light has come out a bit darker than planned, but it's passable....

Besides the blinds for the windows I can see I could probably add a few more things, in particular on the wall, but I will leave that for later.  I have temporarily run out of ideas.

A little accident

On Saturday I had a little accident with my eye, so at the moment I cannot work on any of my hobbies.  I won't go into detail here, but if you want to find out what happened go to my personal blog Glaginye and read the summary in English at the bottom of my posting (That is, if you don't speak Dutch of course :-0)

However, I can just about manage to read the larger fonts on my computer screen, so I'll try and update my blogs in the meantime.  In the late 90s, when I had just started in the miniature world, we often used the IKEA 3D frames "BAS" as a small roombox.  There was also a smaller (half) size, but that was taken out of production even earlier than the BAS frame, which is no longer available either.  I made a little nursery in the smaller size for a friend of mine who had just had a new baby girl and also made little girl's room in the bigger one and used another to temporarily store all my plants and flowers in.

Unfortunately I don't have any good photographs of the nursery.  Back then I managed to buy a cheap digital camera (my first) which produced very grainy pictures, like this:

Of the other two I have been able to take a few clearer pictures:

Since I have joined the local Woodcrafters group where I am learning boxmaking (amongst other things) using the dovetail joining technique, I had a good look at one of those IKEA frames and thought: I can do that!!!  So I did.  I won't say that everything I make goes well, but this was good enough for me: