One 'Dolls House for a Dolls House' - Three Different Looks

One of the creative things about making minis that I really like is to customise and personalise store-bought miniatures. In this case I bought three of the common 'dolls house for a dolls house' model, the size that is right for a miniature nursery in 1:12 scale. They were a standard blue plastic with white roof and red door. You can find them in most miniatures catalogues and shops.

Different ways of decorating a dolls house for a dolls house

   Then I set about 'tizzying' them up! I didn't want them for the nursery. I wanted them to go with other 1:144 scale dolls houses I had made from kitsets. The extra pleasure in doing that is that I could landscape them with grass and tiny flowers and N scale people. I find that a lot of fun.

   The internet is a great resource for miniaturists and Jim Collins' Printmini site is especially good. I went to the section for 1:144 scale and printed out brick, tile and stone papers. Then it was a matter of carefully cutting and pasting them onto the walls and roofs of the dolls houses.

   For the brick dolls house, I used the red brick paper because I liked its slightly faded look, a scalloped tile paper for the roof, then painted the front door.

   The middle dolls house I wanted to look like an unloved, unlived-in, abandoned building so did a rough, 'distressed' paint job on the walls and the roof and changed the colour of the front door. I made a tiny 'For Sale' sign and stuck it outside!

   The stone house underwent a bit of surgery! I sliced off the dormer windows with a craft knife, papered the roof with tile paper then stuck on a chimney left over from a mini house kitset. It gives quite a different look, doesn't it?