I want to share with you my top five tips for achieving a super realistic effect with your miniature foods, tips that I’ve learned through lots of trial and error, and I’ll show you before and after pictures from my portfolio so you can clearly see how these tips will improve your work. These techniques […]
The Tiniest Turtle Takes a Vacation
My friend let me turtle-sit for her while she was at the Kentucky Derby, and, as is usually the case, things got silly. Her turtle’s name is Kurmasa (aka, Kurmy), which is the Sanskrit word for tortoise. My friend owns a yoga studio in town, hence the homage to Kurmasana, a particularly tortuous yoga pose […]
Building a Dollhouse: The Finishing Touches
Well, this is it–the dollhouse is finished! I feel like I should be throwing a party or something to celebrate; I can hardly believe it’s done! I started this project on December 29, and twelve days and $125.88 later, I am the proud owner of a spiffy, new house. Here’s a little photo tour of […]
Building a Dollhouse: Exterior Details
I’ve been a dollhouse-building maniac this weekend, and the house is nearly finished. I did have to make one more hardware store run for a different type of glue appropriate for shingling, which brings us to our final cost tally: amount from last tally: 119.90 another bottle of craft paint: 1.99 tube of Liquid Nails: […]
Building a Dollhouse: Exterior Walls and Roof
In my last post, I had finished attaching the bottom porch floor to my dollhouse, and today I’ll pick up from there and show you how I worked my way from the porch to the roof. To start, I needed to glue the second-story porch floor in place, which required laying the house on its […]
Building a Dollhouse: Assembling the House
The dollhouse project is moving right along, and I would guesstimate that I’ll be done with the entire thing within the next two weeks. And “done” as in, all the exterior details will be completed, but I’ll still have the interior decorating to do, but that’s the fun part, in my opinion, so I’m definitely […]
Building a Dollhouse: Preparation Work
To start, the instructions recommended that I use a knife to square off the slightly rounded corners of the windows and doors, and that went remarkably fast, because the wood, while being quite thick and sturdy, wasn’t nearly as hard to cut into as I thought. Next up, I painted all of the exterior walls, […]
How to Stain Dollhouse Shingles
Today has been a messy day in the studio, and I’ve finished staining the shingles for my dollhouse using one packet of dark grey shingle dye purchased at Hobby Lobby. I also picked up a bottle of Aleene’s Tacky Glue, which is what the dollhouse kit instructions recommended for gluing all but the shingles. So far, […]