More clientele

The Lego cash register has been very popular, thanks for your comments.  I bet there are lots of things that could be made out of Lego and then disguised to look appropriate for the dollshouse.

I've now finished the final three dolls that I am upcycling.  The shops now look fairly well populated although there should perhaps be another staff person.  I will keep my eyes open for a decent doll to be a shop assistant.  I do have some other dolls in my stash but unlike these dolls it is their heads and limbs that look mutated, not just their hideous clothes, so no good for this project.

Here is the 'before' picture.

The doll at the left wasn't that bad apart from fur-like hair and a gravity-defying cardigan.  I tamed the cardigan with some hidden stitching, and glued some additional hair onto her head right over the old hair.  There wasn't much I could do about her silhouette which suggests she is wearing the mother of all push-up bras - it's because of the edge of the china head plate across her chest.

The other two dolls are ultra-cheap dolls dressed in hot-glued travesties which I immediately removed.  Amusingly they had glued on lace underwear, which seems a surprising amount of detail considering how hideous their dresses were.  And their bodies are actually quite nice, full china bodies with moving arms and legs. I tried doing something with their nylon hair, but it was too springy so I had to scrape it off.  Their heads have a hollow in them.  I decided that they deserved to be in skirts and dresses to show off their well formed legs.

I've discovered that despite my large stash of ripped-out magazine articles on dressing dolls, and my library of dollshouse books, I don't actually appear to have any modern clothing patterns.  So I had to wing it.  For the first doll, I made a sort of shift dress cut on the bias from very thin cotton denim, and used some of the rick-rack trim from the travesty dress for a belt.  I added a leather handbag I had in my stash, and some blond hair.

For the second doll, I made a blue velvet mini skirt, and then stretched my doll-dressing skills to the limit by constructing a Liberty-style blouse with collar.  For the hair, I tied the centre of a hank of hair tightly with thread, and glued the resulting lump into the hole in the head.  Once that dried, I arranged the hair with a bit more glue around the hairline, then gave her a modern hair cut.

1:12 scale Cash Register / Till from Lego

I've been looking for a modern cash register for my quilt shop for a long time.  I could only find two for sale online, a British one which wasn't very detailed and an American one which seemed rather expensive.  There is a card printable cash register on Jim's Printables, but I didn't think I could get it to look very realistic.  So I decided I would have to make my own.

Step one was to have a protracted dig in my son's large box of discarded Lego (he has now grown out of it).  After a long search, I came up with the following components.

The two bases are quite thin, only one 'bump' high.  I put one on top of the other to simulate a cash drawer, added the slanted bits to be the keyboard, and topped it with the four-bump bar, and capped off the bumps with the two smooth caps. 

Meanwhile, I was also looking for a bit of Lego to use for a credit card machine.  I didn't find anything, so I had a dig through various other junk boxes and came up with a discarded dollshouse electric plug.

I pulled out the wire and the pins, and cut the plug in half using a razor saw.

To make the sides of the credit card machine, I used one small punched card circle (the size of a hole punch for a ring binder) for the end, and cut two side pieces from a larger punched card circle.

Then I sprayed both assemblies with grey car primer.

To add the detail, I searched on Google Images under 'cash register screen' for the keyboard, 'cash register customer pole display' for the readout, and 'credit card machine' for the credit card machine keyboard.  I shrank the images I found down to the appropriate size, and printed them out on an inkjet printer.  Then I sealed them with DecoArt Multi Sealer, and glued them on using PVA glue.  I also added a poster for quilt classes to the customer side of the register, and a tiny 'crystal' to be the keyhole of the cash drawer.

More dolls

As well as the resin figures covered in the last post, I have five china-head dolls that I had picked up cheaply in sales bins at shows.  They obviously don't look as realistic but I am hopeful I can use them to add more customers to the quilt and knitting shops.

I will put my hand up and admit that dressing dolls is not my forte.  If I'm on a course with a teacher to guide me, then I can turn out a reasonable product.  Left to my own devices, I generally end up with something that looks more like a mutant.

Here are the 'before' pictures.

The doll at the right is wearing a hand-knit jumper that I bought separately.  She was the least in need of attention, so I started with her.

I stripped off the remains of her blouse and took off the trousers.  They were way too big, with a crotch that was about half an inch too low.  So I raised the crotch and slimmed down the legs with some stitching.

I also cut off the waistband and re-stitched the front and back seams to reduce excess.

Then I put it back on the doll, hand stitched the pleats in again, and gathered up the waist.

As she was suffering from a major bad hair day, I trimmed up the hair with nail scissors and then sprayed her whole head with hair spray to smooth down the fly-aways.

Then the handknit jumper went back on.

Now she is having a good dig into the sales bin in the knitting shop.

The next mutant to receive some attention was the older bag lady in the head scarf.  I stripped off all of her clothes, and peeled off her wild hot-glued hair mop.  I had some grey hair in my stash already formed into ripples, so I glued some of that on to create a hairstyle, and added some bead earrings.

For her clothing, I cut up an old cardigan. I used a bit of the ribbed collar for her skirt, and then cut a pattern out of kitchen paper towel for her tunic top.

I cut the tunic out all in one piece, hemmed under the cuffs at the wrist, and applied glue along the cut edge of the back and front to stop fraying.  Then I cut a slit for the neck, and sewed the side seams on the sewing machine.  I wasn't sure what to do with the neckline, as I thought trying to turn it under would be too bulky.  So I glued on some mini rickrack.  I'm not entirely happy with it, perhaps I should have tried to do a collar.





And here she is, taking part in the quilting workshop on the top floor.

Two dolls was all that I had time for, so three more to go.

All dolled up

There are two big jobs I have been putting off on this house, and today I finally started one of them.  The other job will be to make loads of precise small quilts to hang from the ceiling.  But today I tackled the doll population.

I'm not always convinced about dolls in a dollshouse, partly because the ones I can afford don't look very realistic.  Some of my houses have them, some of them don't.  But I felt that part of the ambience of a quilting and knitting shop is to have lots of customers and staff, so I have been picking up cheap resin figures and cheap dolls when I've seen them over the past few years.

I knew it was time to tackle the dolls when DH asked why there were so many 'corpses' littering the shop floor.  We decided that the psychopath must be the guy with the coffee cup as he looked far too young to be drinking coffee and too calm about being surrounded by dead bodies.

Anyway.

So today I tackled re-painting the resin figures.  These are relatively crudely painted in the first place, so there was a fair bit of touching up to do where paint had slopped on the wrong surface or hadn't fully covered.  Also, I had some duplicate figures which I wanted to make look different.  This was surprisingly time consuming and while the results are not perfect, they aren't bad for an average £8 per figure. All touching up was done with Games Workshop acrylic paints. I did find that some of these dolls aren't the same scale, with obvious size differences when you put them next to each other.

I started with the psychopath gentlemen.  The guy on the right who will be a husband just needed touching up plus I painted his t-shirt grey.  The store clerk got darker hair, less effeminate eyebrows, tidier shoes, and a nametag which reveals his name is Cam.

For the knitter, I tidied her up, gave her silver shoe buckles, made her hair and eyebrows greyer to match her wrinkles and reduced the size of her staring pupils.  The shopper in yellow got her bra show-thru toned down, another strap on her sandals, and a tidy up.  Shopper on the right got a tidy up, a blonder hair  colour and improved shoes.

I wanted this other knitter to look younger, despite the wrinkles, so I darkened her hair and gave her a fringe (bangs) which looks awful in this picture but looks more convincing in the dollshouse. I darkened her skirt a little, changed the neckline of her jumper and gave her different shoes.

This figure isn't great to start with, her head is too small and a bit squashed looking.  I wanted the duplicates to look different. I tidied up the left figure, repainted her 'fabric' stack, reduced the size of her pupils and tried to make her eyebrows look less surprised.  She is staff so also got a nametag after I took this picture.  The shopper on the right got blue jeans, a turquoise top, socks, red shoes, blonde hair, different lipstick and makeup, blonde eyebrows.  As a finishing touch, I glued a real leather handbag strap over her arm, cutting it so it looks like it is hanging from her arm.

Another pair of duplicates.  The one on the right just got a tidy up, and a quilting magazine to hold (I trimmed it so it fit into the crook of her arm).  The one on the left got tights, new shoes, a red cardigan, brunette hair, and a handknit scarf.


By this time I had run out of energy so the dressed dolls will have to wait for another day. But I enjoyed sticking the results of my labours into the Willowcrest.

So much detail

One of the reasons that I prefer constructing dollshouses to actually furnishing them is that there is just so much detail required to give any semblance of realism.  You can spend a couple of hours creating one small thing to tuck into one corner of a scene where it gets almost lost even though it adds to the atmosphere.  Yet a couple of hours might be the only amount of time I get to dollshouse during a working week.

Doing a quilting shop is very detail intensive since your average quilt shop is packed chocka full with stuff.  But I am soldiering on.

I unearthed some 'cutting mats' that I had printed off a few years ago and glued to green card, when I was building the cutting station for the main shop.  This time I cut out the smaller mats to use on the workshop tables on the top floor. Now I need to work out how to simulate 1/12th scale rotary cutters to go with the mats.

My two hours this week was spent putting together a Phoenix Miniatures white metal kit DH51 antique sewing machine.  This is how it comes, and at first I didn't understand how to put it together (there are no instructions).  I did some googling and found it was a model of a Wilcox and Gibbs sewing machine, then found this fabulous website which had pictures of actual old machines to help me understand how to assemble and paint it.

So I glued it together with Zap-a-Gap but left the base separate.  I painted the machine with Games Workshop (GW) Chaos Black, GW Chain Mail, GW Scorched Brown and GW Burnished Gold.  The base is supposed to be wood, so I painted that with Scorched Brown, drybrushed with GW Snakebite Leather, and painted the feet with Burnished Gold. I finished them both with a gloss varnish but in retrospect I think it would have been better to do the wood in a satin varnish as it came out looking too shiny. The gold decoration was way too tiny for me to paint so I just 'scribbled' with the tip of a toothpick dipped in Burnished Gold to give an effect.  If you are wondering what I am holding, it's a wine cork topped with bluetack which my DH came up with as a handy way to hold small things you are trying to paint.  I think he saw the idea on someone else's website.

The machine was placed on top of one of the display cases in the knitting shop, as a cute accent.

Bribery works

With the prospect of being able to start the McKinley build if I can just get my Willowcrest into a more finished state, I have actually done some work on it this week.  My office is closed between Christmas and New Year so I have some time in hand to work on it.

I started with the top floor, which I have designed as a workshop area and knitting corner.  This was the easiest place to start as most of the components were already assembled and just needed to be put in place. (Although I also stuck a few more accessories into the knitting shop on the second floor).

First off, I took out most of the furniture from the top floor and stuck in some 'quilts' on the walls.  I still need to add more, but left to right these are: a print of a vintage quilt on fabric, which I sewed into a 'quilt'; a silk carpet which I thought looked like a quilt; two small cross stitch pieces which a friend gave me; another silk carpet which I trimmed down to fit above the storage cupboard; and a cross-stitch coverlet (done by machine I think) which I bought at a dollshouse show. The tiny hand stitched hexagon quilt over the stair railing is a vintage quilt I bought at an antique show.(The giant red reindeer on the outside balcony is a Christmas ornament.)

I had a bare-wood ironing board that I think I bought from Apollo Miniatures, and a bare metal iron. I painted the ironing board grey to start with.

Then I painted the tray part of the ironing board with Games Workshop Chainmail to look like silver metal.  The iron I primed with Games Workshop Foundation Paint, and then painted white, with a neon green insert and a red light. I covered the board itself with a printed fabric cover, just wrapped around and glued neatly underneath.

I positioned the ironing board behind the stair railing, where it will be accessible to all workshop users.











I had previously made five plaster copies of a resin sewing machine that I had purchased (see previous post).  This week I spent some time making them all a foot pedal, using some spare electrical wire and a piece of crown moulding cut into segments and painted white.  Once those were ready, I stuck in the workshop tables and chairs, and positioned the five workstations with their machines.

With the tables in place, I can start adding accessories to each work station, such as some tiny tape measures, some turned spools of thread, some bolts of fabric, and a tiny little thimble, and a pre-prepared sewing notions basket.  I need to add lots more, including some cutting mats.

Now I am working on the 'knitting corner' on the other side of the railing.  I had one knitting bag that I made in my old dollshouse club quite a while ago, so this morning I made up a kit from Model Village Miniatures for a second bag.  The kit comes with everything you need, including fabric, cardboard, handles, and the materials to make up some accessories including wool, 'needles', a fake pattern, segments of drinking straw, preprinted wool labels and a pre-printed tape measure.

I shouldn't complain as the kit is extremely reasonably priced, but I found the instructions for the bag rather unclear so resorted to working it out for myself.  It turned out fairly well.

Then I made up the accessories.

And this is the finished knitting bag, which will go on the floor next to the bench in the knitting corner.

Merry Christmas to me!

Look what Santa managed to deliver on 23 December, courtesy of the Greenleaf company sale!

It's the 1/12th scale McKinley wall-hung dollshouse kit, which I've always wanted, plus the Diana which is one of the newer birchwood laser cut 1/24th scale Victorian houses.

For the benefit of any UK readers, I will go into a bit more detail about what was involved in ordering this from the States. 

When I got the sales notification, I emailed Greenleaf directly to ask how much international shipping to the UK would be.  For these two kits, they quoted c. $110.  From the paperwork included with the box, it looks like this was based on the United States Postal Service Priority main International Rate / Commercial Base Pricing.  The large but thin box was posted on 6 December from Greenleaf.

Around 16 December, I received a card in the post from UK Parcelforce Worldwide to say that a parcel had arrived from overseas and was subject to Customs charges.  On the declared value of $130, they charged the following:

Customs Duty:  zero
Excise Duty: zero
Import VAT (Value Added Tax) £30.17
Other: zero
Clearance Fee: £8
------------------------
Total £38.17

I paid this fee online using a credit card at http://www.parcelforce.com/, and was able to specify my delivery date.  I picked 23 December because I knew I would be home that day, but I could have had it earlier.  The parcel was delivered to my door early on 23 December.

This means that my total expenses for these two houses are:
Purchase at 25% discount in sale, plus shipping (c.$110): $245.72 (c. £157.61)
VAT/Clearance fee: £38.17
----------------------------
Total: £195.78

Considering that I don't think you can get either of these houses in the UK at the moment, and that Elora Dollshouses in Canada (who come up in Google results over here as UK shippers) would have charged CAN $192 just to send the McKinley over here (c £120), I think my purchase compares favourably.  Also favourably against the price of UK-made house kits, although I am on weaker ground there as the McKinley is still the rubbish mahogany diecut plywood.  Now that I have bought one, Greenleaf will no doubt issue this in spanking new laser cut birch ply.

Now I must exert superhuman willpower and not start building the McKinley until I have done a better job on finishing up the Willowcrest.