Miniatures aren’t just for dollhouses and role playing games. It has become an artform. Big companies use machines to mass produce minis of all kinds. Regular folks use whatever they can – from every day household items to 3d printers and everything in between.
I just got some flooring from the Ukraine that’s phenomenal, but I’m not talking about that today. Today, I want to introduce you all to Queen City Minis, a YouTube channel run by a lady named Shyra. She has a voice a lot like Ara from Bentley House Minis – soothing, even toned and easy to listen to.
I found her quite by accident looking up a video on making plaster, and I am really enjoying her work. I don’t have a favorite to share so, I’ll share one that I thought you might like to see as an intro to her channel:
When it comes time to decorate my dollhouse’s kitchen, I’ll be using some of the techniques in this video and its related videos. She does some awesome work!
If you do like what you see, hit the Like button at the very least and leave a comment for her. We all love getting feedback of one form or another. If you want to follow her channel, please Subscribe. 🙂
I’ll see you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!!
Plaster was a regular wall covering back in the day, and it was a useful thing since it helped fill in chinks in brick and stone as well as making the walls and ceiling look nice. The plaster was covered in a lime wall to help it look white, and I’m guessing to help protect the plaster as well. I’ll have to do some more research and get back to you.
I’m using joint compound and a craft trowel which is very small and not that easy to use to make a ceiling and walls that look like they’ve been plastered.
I now have a proper ruler and exacto knife to go with my other tools. I’m using a lot of what I have on hand as I have other things I need my money for….
The first thing I did was measure out the first room’s walls and ceiling, the wine cellar, and cut out thin pieces of cardboard to fit over them.
The piece with the white smeared on it is the back wall. I had thought about painting them before plastering, but I decided not to.
These three need to be sanded down to get rid of the lines from the trowel – hopefully – and I have one more wall to do before moving on to the painting. I’m going to do a wash of white acrylic paint and mod podge before I put them all into the dollhouse.
It’s not a lot of progress from the last time I talked about this project, and I will be doing more as the year progresses. This is a long term project as I’m learning and I go along. I plan to make as much as I can by hand too so there will be plenty to share with you as time goes on.
I hope you will continue with me on this journey and feel free to make comments, suggestions and give me ideas for things. It’s not going to be completely realistic, but I’m doing my best.
See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!
I finally got the back of the house mostly done. Since it’s the biggest part of the exterior, that’s what I’ve been working on since my last post regarding my fail. It wasn’t an epic fail, luckily, but it was still a fail. I went back and did the paper towel to faux stone technique correctly using cheap paper towels with no design on it and watered down school glue aka pva glue.
Once I got the back looking as close to proper stone in texture and scale, I took it outside and applied two coats of white spray paint. I didn’t want to use regular paint because I didn’t want brush strokes to show.
I still need to trim to excess off around the sides and paint the bottom white to blend in with the house. I’m also going to get some pigment powder to put a light coat of gray on it. I think it will make it a little bit more realistic. Then, it needs a coat of sealant to keep the pigment from being rubbed off.
While I’m waiting to get the powder, I’m going to work on the sides of the house now.
Personally, I think it looks very good for my second attempt at a faux stone look. I won’t be taking short cuts with this technique ever again.
Let me know what you think about how it looks as well as whether or not I should use the powder. Buildings in this era were made of stone and covered in a white lime wash so, I could leave the powder off….
Next week, I’ll show you some of the items I’ve acquired to decorate the inside of the house. I’ve begun getting items for it when I can, and I’ll be making quite a bit as well.
See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!!
Just thought I’d show you what we’ve done on the dollhouse thus far. Last time, it looked like this:
Ground Floor
and today, it looks like:
First Floor
I assure you, the floors aren’t crooked, the angle of the photo is. I am not a good photographer, but I’m better than I was this time last year.
So, we have the Ground Floor and the First Floor, just two more floors to go before we get to the Attic.
The First Floor rooms from left to right are: Study, Library, Music Room, Grand Staircase, Sitting Room, and Ballroom.
This project’s framework is being made out of 1/4 Luann and wood glue. I am not using nails or screws anywhere – yet.
The front of the house will be attached with magnets and small screws(or nails depending on what I can find. The roof of the house is going to be a mansard roof.
At present, the production of interior walls has come to a standstill as my son and I look for a better way to cut the wood. The tools and blades that were suggested to me are hard to use. I don’t own any power tools and can’t afford to buy any so everything is being done by hand. If anyone has any suggestions on what to use to cut the wood without splintering it, please leave a comment below.
I’ve already begun making plans for the decorating of the ground floor. Three of the rooms: both cellars and the mudroom, will have stone floors. I might put stone on the washroom floor as well. I’m not sure if the kitchen will have the stone floor as well or get a wooden one.
This is a French Chateau that is being renovated into Modern – for now – but the Ground Floor is keeping it’s original stone floor for the most part. Let me know what you think : stone or wood in the Kitchen??
I realized, belatedly, I forgot to cut a hole for the door into the mudroom – the Tradesman’s entrance as it were. I may just put up a fake one in the room itself if it ends up being too hard to cut one out.
While I hope to have another floor done by next week, we shall just have to see. The tool and blade is hard to work with but not impossible to use.
See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!
My dollhouse I’m building from scratch has four floors to it, the ground floor is the first. The story for this house is it’s a French Chateau renovated into a modern home, but this is subject to change. Most houses I’ve seen are either some variation of Victorian or Modern. There’s not much else. I welcome all suggestions.
The house will have a ground floor, three floors above and an attic space. I just added the ground floor interior walls and the floor/ceiling.
The rooms are, from left to right: cellar, wine cellar, mudroom/trade entrance, pantry, kitchen and washroom. The angle for the washroom is a bad one, and I do apologize. The ceilings are 4inches tall in 1:24 scale and 8 feet tall in normal scale. 1 inch equals 2 feet. The depth of the walls is 6 inches or 12 feet.
I’m waiting on the next floor to dry else I’d have the rest of the room measurements for you. I’ll give them to you next time.
None of the rooms will perfectly line up with the walls below. Normal houses don’t do that, so my dollhouse rooms won’t either.
I noticed, belatedly, the house is not properly centered on the base, and I left no room on the back for chimneys so they will have to go on the sides of the house. I’d rather not have them hanging off the back of the base.
This is definitely a learning experience for me, and I’m looking forward to doing more to this piece. I am going to be making as much as I can by hand from inexpensive materials. Considering the size, I don’t think it needs more expensive stuff.
Once the frame of the house is done, the front of the house will be held on by magnets. They are really small ones that I will be embedding in the wood and covering up so they’re not pulled out. I had originally thought of hinges, but the correct size ones are too weak to hold much weight. Once the front has all its windows, doors and staircase added, it will a great deal heavier than it it now. Plus, the magnets won’t be seen.
Next week, I should have more floors in. I won’t be putting up the left wall until all the floors are in. The mansard roof will be going on last.
Feel free to leave comments and/or suggestions below. I’d love to hear from you, especially those who have some experience with this sort of thing.
Around the beginning of the year I mentioned wanting to redo a dollhouse I’d bought off Facebook Marketplace :
I’d had to take off one side of the roof to get it to fit into my car it was about 3 feet tall and about as wide. I’m not sure if the scale was 1:12 or 1:6, but it was pretty big.
I decided to redo it because the wood on the walls was splintering in the middle and some of the second floor was cracked. I recently took the entire piece apart:
The piece standing up in the back right corner is the base, and it’s going to stay intact for the new build. The rest will be cut down for interior walls and other bits I can salvage out of it. The wood isn’t of good quality so it’s not going to be used for the exterior of the house.
This wood is 1/4 in Luan, and it was cut by my co-worker, Dennis. The pieces in the back are the back and front pieces. The front is going to be held on by magnets and be removable. I’ll be decorating from the back of the house forward. The house is also going to have a mansard roof.
I’ve decided to do the outside as a French Chateau with the mansard roof, stone façade and a staircase that goes down both sides of the front doors.
The first floor will actually be the basement area, and the second floor will have the entrance to the house.
I would love suggestions on how to decorate the house. I was thinking Regency era for the interior but then again, I could do modern as well. Please, let me know what you think. I’m open to all ideas and suggestions.
Here are the main tools I am going to use:
I’m sure I’ll end up using other tools as well but for the framework, these are the main ones I’ll be using.
I’m not rushing this build. I’m going to let glue dry overnight and do only a piece or two at a time. The only nails in this build will be the ones for the magnets to attach to. I plan to drill holes for the magnets to be glued into on the front wall, and small nails will be inset into the edges of the side walls. These will all be covered up with glue and either paper or something else. This will not only help them blend into the frame of the house, it will also help keep them from pulling out due to the magnetic attraction. Ara from Bentley House Minis talked about this happening during her initial build of the Beetlejuice house.
I’ll show you what I’ve done to the house next week. Tomorrow, I plan to put on the back wall and Thursday, I’ll put up one of the side walls. I also plan to start marking where the first floor room dividers are going to go. Those will need to be cut to size before they can be placed. I’m planning on going out of town Friday, if all goes well with my car’s front end work and thus, I won’t be able to work on the house until I get back.
Still, this will be a welcome break from my stitching and will keep me from getting burned out on it. I hope someone will be as interested in this as I am. This is going to be a long term project as I plan to make as much as I can of the furnishings and only buy what I can’t make myself. This is going to be quite the journey!!
See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!
Ara is the creative spirit behind this channel, and she’s Amazing!! She makes lots of stuff, and I couldn’t decide on just one video so, I am linking to a playlist. This playlist is about a dollhouse in 1:12 scale that is made out of cardboard! Ara also made furniture for the dollhouse out of cardboard, and she was nice enough to share all of the blueprints and patterns for this project.
I am definitely going to try something like this when I’m done with my book end project!
Be sure to Subscribe to Ara’s channel as well as Like/Dislike and comment!! Feedback is always welcome, good or bad!
Personally, I think you’ll like her channel. She’s easy to listen to, explains things very well and goes slow when she’s demonstrating so following along is a breeze.
Don’t take my word for it, go check her out!
See you on the flipside and don’t forget your towel and sonic screwdriver!!
Dedicated to discussing the craft & industry of dramatic writing, maintaining mental health, and the unsurprisingly large overlap between the two. Oh, and maybe some Beatles trivia.
Griffin's Nest 