MORE Dollhouse Stuff

Okay, I did it! Instead of using Rich's scanner, I photographed old photographs with my digital camera. It worked like a charm!
Here's what my Haunted dollhouse looked like before I had to tear off the front.Here is the interior "Hallowe'en Feast" going on. Some of the food still exists, except for the really cool "Jell-o mold" at the back. It was made of coloured silicon. I bought it at a miniatures show.....but of course my children eventually destroyed it.
Here is the little house I built while living in Arizona. The kit only cost me $13!!!!! It was one of those punch out, die cut things. Some of the furniture is Chrysenbon. I find their stuff a little small for 1/12 scale....but it's still really cute.
Here's an old late 1980's photo of me and my very first dollhouse. I built it while I was going to Sheridan College in Oakville. I made it into a haunted house of course. This was a very blurry photo.
Here's one shot of the interior. It was VERY simple inside. I fell in LOVE with the skeleton wallpaper and used it in the tiny upstairs as well.
Now onto a couple customized Barbies! The doll on the right was originally blonde, and I painstakingly coloured each strand with a black "Sharpie" marker. Crazy, eh? I also had to paint her eyebrows darker and give her a bindi (the decoration on her forehead).
The doll on the left was a proper "Indian" Barbie, but I wanted to make her look less formal......so I kept her choli (shirt) and made a new skirt for her. And I had to give her more bangles.
Here are three Barbies that I customized. I'm planning on doing more bellydancers, but I haven't had time! There is a previous post where I showed my Xena Barbie. I sold her.
I know I posted my Burqa Barbie before, but here are some clearer photos.
Surprise. She's the bellydancer. It's sort of a political statement. I got the idea from those "United colours of Beneton" ads, where they showed some Afghani girls with and without their burqas. (Well, lifted up...not really without.)

My Apologies To Dollhouse Haters

I've decided that I have to show my other surviving dollhouse....although it's really a "shop"....not a "house". In total, over the years, I have completed six "dollhouses" and only half finished a lighthouse. In the category of "dollhouse", I include two homes that a mouse would have. One was a papier mache tree stump, and an orange crate "behind the wall" look at a mouse's home. I'll try to find the old photos for my darling fiancee to scan for me, since the buildings themselves no longer exist. THIS building DOES exist and I can't for the life of me recall the kit it was from. All I know is that it was inexpensive and I customized it. Here is the interior near the cash register. For the "linoleum" floor I used printed paper covered with layers of clear varnish. The plastic skeleton is a leftover from my "haunted" dollhouse.
Over in the far right, you can see a "Mudhead Kachina" I made out of Sculpey. The woven "bowls" (on the floor) were made from sweetgrass I had growing in my backyard. And that's a real birchbark basket I made. No, I didn't make the teddy
bear.
You never know WHAT you'll find at THIS Curiosity Shoppe. It seems someone has got their hands on a Tutankhamun sarcophagus. The little gold chest to the left of it is a tiny jewellery box, apparently plated with real gold. Another of my foolish purchases of the past! And there's my mini-horse painting!
Here is the corner of paintings. The three coming up the staircase are matchbook covers that I found interesting, and the other Indian art has been clipped from a cheap copy of the "Kama Sutra". The Cezanne is my own painting, shown in an early post, and I made the tiny paint box.
The Dream Catcher was one of a pair of earrings.
Now THESE little beauties are hand blown tiny glass statues from Russia. I bought them at the CNE one year and they are SO cute! The shark's jaws are plastic and came as a set of earrings. The tiny piggy bank was one of my very first miniature purchases, as well as the fish vase almost directly under it.
And here's a long shot of the interior of the shop. It's not completely finished yet. I still have some more shingles to stick on, and I need more tables or shelves for the interior, but I wanted to show it off. Cute, ain't it?

Dollhouse Stuff!

Okay, here are the original plans for the house. It was actually a "Walmer Dollhouse" kit, not "Real Good Toys" as I had previously thought. You can see my scribblings on the page regarding the changes I planned to make.

Here, again, is MY house. I'm in the midst of rebuilding the papier mache front yard. (I Photoshopped out some junk that was cluttering up the photo.) So you can see how much I altered the original design.

The Whole House

Some of you have asked how big the actual house is......well...compare it to the old milk can on the left. I'm sure we're all old enough to remember THOSE!
It's sitting on top of its base that contains the basement and "secret room" ( you can see the secret exit on the bottom to the right) and I used to have a big papier mache landscaped garden attached.....but in order to transport it, we had to cut it off. So now the base is bare, and you can see the ramshackle structure built of old orange crate wood and foamcore! The garden was full of old juniper prickles and thorn bushes......so I won't be bothered replacing it.

A Few More Miniatures

Here are some clearer photos of some mini-fish trophies I made a few years ago for a lighthouse I started to build. I showed them in a much earlier post, but they weren't as clear as these. I only had one colour of "Sculpy" (polymer clay that hardens in the oven), so I had to hand paint them with acrylic craft paint for the details. The Muskie is about 3 and a half inches long.A spiny dogfish....very shark-like in appearance.
An Atlantic Wolffish....which are supposed to be really nasty and have been known to bite at fisherman's oars!
This last image was taken many years ago, before my dollhouse ended up in the garage. My kids have since trashed the little fridge, which I made from an old tea box, a ball point pen clip, and some balsa wood. It had "Sculpy" food in it.....like green cheese, dragon milk, a lizard on a plate. You know....witchy stuff.
I'll have to rebuild it all some day.

The House That Suzanne Built...

Anyone who truly knows me, knows that one of my biggest passions is miniatures. I LOVE tiny houses with tiny furniture and stuff in them...I can't get enough! Shortly after my son was born, (over 10 years ago), I bought this kit for roughly $200. It wasn't exactly what I wanted, but it was close enough......and I knew I could modify it. It had a mansard roof and a tower, so it would be perfect for my vision...a "haunted" house. Well, it became more of a fun Hallowe'en house, because I don't like things that are gory.
I decorated the rooms in a "sort-of" Victorian style, and took many liberties with the furnishings. The couch (above and below) was designed and built by me in a style that made me think of "Beetlejuice"....but toned down. I wallpapered the walls with beautiful Origami Paper.
I had to buy a separate kit for the staircase, and modify it to turn and have a small landing. The house didn't allow much room for a staircase, but if a dollhouse doesn't have a staircase in it, I get upset.
To me, making a dollhouse is like building a REAL house, that if you imagined yourself really tiny and living in it, it would work.........okay, okay....except for plumbing! That's getting a bit ridiculous!
I made an attic....
And a kitchen.....
And an upstairs hallway leading to the bathroom....

Here is the narrow staircase going up to the bedroom and attic. THIS was the only staircase that originally came with the kit.
I know, the wallpaper has a buckle in it. I think I did that on purpose to help give it that "run down" look. In the bedroom, I once again used Origami paper on the walls (which are slanted because of the mansard roof).
Here's a better shot of the Hallowe'en themed bed. I made ALL the bedding, but the bed was already assembled.
I was SO glad to be able to get right into the rooms with my digital camera, so I could FINALLY show that I had a framed portrait of Vincent Price hanging on the bedroom wall. (I got the picture out of a magazine). I was trying to show that the imaginary witch that lived there admired him so.
Here's the second bathroom, in the basement....so damp that a frog is living there! I used an old Chrysenbon kit salvaged from a previous project.
Here's the creepy cellar.
Here's the witch's stash of secret herbs and potions.
And through that dungeon looking door in the cellar is the secret room.....where only the witch and her friends know what goes on! Mwoooooohah hah hah !

Now.....the reason for this post is because I JUST got this house back from my ex. It had been sitting out in his garage for the past few years, and I said I wanted it back. Luckily, he agreed, and I just spent all day yesterday cleaning it up and repairing it. It was FULL of spider webs, dead moths, and even some live spiders!
I want my kids to play with it now, so it needed some TLC. It's been neglected for years.