miniature village

As a child, I always wanted little mini houses for my little mini dolls. I would take a rough idea (half drawn, half spoken) to my dad and ask him if he could make me a house out of wood. That’s easy, thought the 8 year old me. I remember being in his workshop, in the cellar (as we call it) trying to explain exactly what I wanted. Lofts and second story porches were always a must in my imagination. As an adult, I realize how much more actually goes into making something out of wood; designing a plan, figuring out dimensions, calcualting exact measurements, assembling, etc. Looking back, I am so thankful my dad did his best to try and create the idea that was in my head without any measurements or calculations.

Now, 30 or so years later, I take my ideas to my husband, Nick when I need help building something complex. My idea: Dollhouse Summer Camp. A week long summer class for kids who love making miniatures as much as I do.

First step, making a plan. Now again, in my head, this is fairly simple. This time I am prepared with my hand drawn sketch, labeled with dimensions. I used graph paper and a ruler! Nick looked at my drawing and, well….combine a detail oriented craftsman with a Mechanical Engineer, hours of work on the computer and, my simple sketch turned into a 6 page Solidworks drawing. Amazing!

Next step, finding wood and getting it to the correct thickness. This took quite a lot of time and effort. We actually found the wood (clear pine) at a yard sale for free but needed to plane it down from 3/4″ to 1/2″. Next, cutting all the pieces based on the measurements from Nick’s drawing. Long story short, from all the wood we had, we were able to make 5 dollhouse kits.

I have to pare down my story or this blog post will be too long. Fast forward to summer and I had four anxious students ready to build, make and create. Our work space was  the construction zone in my house, that will soon be my new studio. It worked out great though because we didn’t have to worry about making a mess. They were each given the kit as you see above. The first steps were to paint, wallpaper and install wood floors. These steps are easier to do when the dollhouse is in pieces and laying flat.

painting the outside

they chose their outside color

wood flooring with jumbo pop sticks

wall paper chosen and glued down using Mod Podge

When most of the dollhouse structure work was complete, Nick and I assembled all of them using wood glue and a pin nailer. The kids were so excited to see their dollhouses put together the next day. They couldn’t wait to continue!

Then, we started making the little miniatures to go inside each room of the house. The first two pieces we made were beds: an easy one (3 pieces of wood) and a difficult one (many little pieces of wood). I gave them the dimensions, they cut all the wood and assembled the beds after I gave a demo.

We then just kept on making furnishings for the inside. There was quite a lot of prep work that I did before and after class each day…hours. I precut a lot of wood for the furniture (making little kits) simply for safety and time saving. During class, we worked for a solid three hours a day, for 5 days. It was labor intensive but we all had fun. You could feel the rush of excitement in the room on the last day when we were bustling around trying to finish, getting things ready to show the parents.

from left: the difficult bed, bathroom vanity kits, cradle kits and finished baby cradle, with all my notes written underneath 🙂

“braided” rugs, they were so impressed by how difficult these looked but how easy they were to make

busy hands sanding aways making mini plants

miniature plants

they just couldn’t wait to start putting things in 🙂

just can’t wait to put this in 😀

making little art for the house

Reflecting on the week, I think it was a huge success. I received emails from parents saying their child didn’t want dollhouse camp to end and that they were absolutely loving it. They were all extremely surprised by the outcome and the work they put into it. One girl told me she never thought she would ever BUILD a dollhouse! We could have worked for another full week, just to make everything I thought we’d have time for. But, the houses were beautiful, pretty darn cute and as I said, they LOVED all of it!

I loved this experience. It was a lot of work but also rewarding. I couldn’t have done it to this level of craftsmanship without my husband Nick who patiently helped from start to finish. I think we make a good team.

Without further delay, here are the houses!