But now to the really important things :).

Do you remember my tiny bed room? I somehow forgot to continue working on it, but after I found a tiny lamp for the desk I thought it was time to do something with the room again.

The bed has a bed spread now. I am not sure if it isn’t too much of a color and pattern mix with the cushions and the rug. But I like how it looks, and Perdita seems to like it.

It’s getting dark early. Probably one of the things I hate most about this time of year. I found this little lamp in one of my prop boxes, very nice to brighten up the evening.

I will take more pictures of the tiny bed room soon, I am just waiting for the next sunny Sunday to show you all the details. Let there be light, and warmth and colorful bed spreads!

The bedroom is on the top floor, like the bath it has one slanted wall and a skylight. The window is between the bath and the bedroom, I just need to add some nice curtains and a background. Somewhere in my fabric stash there must be a light yellow cotton with tiny flowers, I just couldn’t find it. Or maybe just café curtains? I am not sure yet.

I made a tiny desk with fake drawers for the bed room. The white lamp is bought, and so is the notebook. The chair is one of the chairs I made for the kitchen table, but it looks nice with the desk as well.

I made the bed and a matching tiny nightstand to go with it. My girls like to read before they go to sleep. Who doesn’t like a good murder mystery and a cup of tea, tucked in and comfy?

And I found this red dollhouse alarm-clock that looks exactly like the one I had as a kid. One of those you just can’t ignore. I still remember the sound of the alarm.

The tiny shelf is painted in the same colors as the desk. And of course I made all the books. Apparently the tiny girls in the house like Harry Potter just as much as I do.

The little plants are bought as well. I think it’s quite enough furniture for this tiny room. Even if the future inhabitants won’t have a closet. Unfortunately the bed is so long that it’s hard to take pictures of the room without visible endings of the wall or floor in the picture. I am not sure where to put which picture, that’s why some of them still sit on the shelf. There will be a quilted bed spread as well. Some day.

I thought about adding fringes to the rug, but I actually quite like it without. What do you think?

Anyway, if I manage to finish the room this year, I will post lots of pictures of course. But for now this will have to do.

I painted it and added the counter, the tiny storage unit and the rest of the furniture. The tiny coffee maker, food items and the mugs are from Microworld Store (Aliexpress shop with loads of food and kitchen stuff). I found a lot of free printable food packaging images and created a board on Pinterest to collect them, just in case you are interested.

The tiny storage unit with trash and a couple of cook books (They are in the 1:6 scale armchair template)

The (almost) full view.

And now with dolls 🙂

And Barbie

Materials needed:

• Glue, cutter or scalpel, ruler and pencil or ball pen, pins and tape. If you don’t have a cutting ruler, a small picture frame glass will do the job. Felt, fleece or any other padding material you want to use. Fabric for your cover.
• DIN A4 foam board in 5mm thickness, make sure it’s paper laminated on both sides. That would be letter sized and 3/16 inch thickness for the non-metric folks. I ordered my foam board for this project from Amazon, (Cathedral A4 foam board). 20 sheets for 14€. I am sure there is something similar available in every country. Not the best quality, but absolutely sufficient for this chair project.
• Square wooden dowels for the legs. I used 1 x1 cm width, and cut them into 3cm long pieces. You can get them in your local hardware store or model making online stores. Even from Amazon, I believe, they are sold as cake support rods. You can use something else of course, just make sure to adjust the cut-outs for the leg support.

Pick your template size. You will find the link to the template PDFs at the bottom of this post.

Make sure you print it without automatic scaling at 100%. Unfortunately every printer has a margin, and I had to keep that in mind. If you want to get the most out of your foam board, start at the board edges (and cut your printout accordingly). Make sure the boards have exact right angles before you rely on that. Even if they are machine cut, the angles are sometimes a bit out of square. I tried to arrange the pieces in a way that would allow you to cut without a lot of waste, but you will still have some left overs. Keep them, they are great to make tiny books :-).

Note for the letter template: I couldn’t fit the second side part (number 7) on the page, you will need to cut that twice. And you will need more foam board than the two sheets.

How to make the armchair?

Place the printout on the foam board and pin it or tape it to keep it from moving. Use a pencil or ball pen to trace all outlines. Press only gently, else you will poke a hole into your board. The surface of the board is soft enough to create an indentation of the shapes, and you can draw proper lines using the dents afterwards. No measuring needed. Once you have transferred all outlines, cut your pieces. I find it easier to cut straight into the material in a standing position because the angle is different, but of course that’s up to you. The cheap foam board is not very dense, so there will be a bit of crumbling and uneven edges.

Chose which side of the side parts you want to face outward, and draw a line for the legs on the inside. Glue the back panel part A (2) between the side parts (1). You can easily pin into the material to keep the parts in position until the glue is dry. I prefer Ponal wood glue over hot glue, but you probably have your own sticky favorite.

While that dries, glue your leg support (6) to the back panel part B (3). Make sure the bottoms are aligned and the cut-outs face down. Same goes for the leg support on the foot rest/front panel (4).

Glue your back part B (3) below the back part A and the front panel at the front between the side parts. If you want to make sure the angle is right, you can use your seat cut to keep the position in addition to pins, but don’t glue it in yet. The legs come first. Glue your legs in, using the line and your cut-outs to help with the position. You’ll want to take the pins out first to be able to lay the chair flat on it’s sides.

Once your basic frame is dry and stable, glue your seat in. It rests on the seat support on the back panel B and your front panel (4). Last come the parts you can use to make wider arm rests (7). If your side panels and the additional parts are a bit crumbly and don’t align exactly, you can use tape to cover the edges. It doesn’t hurt to tape all edges to add stability.

After this you can start padding your construction. I used white fleece. I found fiber easier to pull over the arm rest than packing foam sheets for example, but I used those for the flat parts.

If you only want this chair for Barbie or action figures (or any other 1:6 dolls with a small head), you can probably reduce the width of the chair, but if you want to use it for Blythe, you’ll want the head to fit between the wings, that’s why I made it a bit wider. You can see in the picture above how the chair looks without any additional padding.

I will add a separate seat and back rest on top of the basic cover, but the fabric cover pattern fits over a thin layer of padding.

I want to be able to take the cover off and wash it or change it, that’s why I prefer to sew it. And I don’t want to spoil the whole chair with a fabric glue mishap. But if you don’t want to take the trouble of sewing, you can look on Youtube for upholstery-videos, there are a lot of different techniques and ways to find your individual solution. This one for example shows how to make a DIY dollhouse armchair. Bentley house minis is a dollhouse miniature DIY channel, and certainly worth a look.

A glued on cover has the advantage of looking like a tight and exact fit compared to the throw cover look of a sewn cover. The disadvantage is that you can get glue where you don’t want it, and mistakes are not easy to fix.

Sewing the cover

Print the cover template and cut your pieces. Add sewing allowance! If you want to use fabric with a pattern, make sure the pattern points in the direction you want it to.

I used corduroy and only pinked the edges.

Attach the stripes at the top to the back part. Pin inner and outer side cover together, align the curved part. As you can see, the outer side cover is wider than the inner cover.

Either baste the parts together or leave the pins in. Connecting the stripes to both parts evenly is easier while they are still aligned.

Fold the stripe at the lose end and insert the fold between the side covers to attach the end. Connect with a few stitches to keep in place. Make tiny cuts into the sewing allowance where the curves are. Align the edges of sides and stripe, pin and baste them down when you are satisfied the sides are evenly connected to the stripe.

I prefer sewing fiddly parts like this by hand. I used the machine to sew the straight parts. You will have your own preferred method.

Don’t close the seam that connects the sides to the back panel all the way down right from the start. Depending on the stretch you will need to test how far you can close it to be able to pull the cover over the arm rests. My corduroy cover fits just fine completely closed, but the material has a tiny bit of stretch to it. Iron your seams. It will look nicer and less crumply if you do.

Once your basic cover is finished, you can make your additional padding. My separate seat and back rest padding are two pieces of foam board with a double layer of fleece glued to it. I added a template and pattern to the PDF. These dolls are so light that they hardly make a dent into thick and soft foam padding, so you might as well just go for a less soft version and add cushions for a comfy look. I closed the covers at the bottom like I would close a gift wrap and stitched it down. And the hard foam base can be used to keep the cover in place.

Use your left overs to make some nice books. Your dolls will enjoy a good book and a cup of coffee in their new armchair.

And now the finished armchair in action 🙂

Chose your template size

Letter / DIN A4 PDF
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I just need to find a way to illuminate both windows- the sky light and the big window. And I guess the small rooms need their own picture format- they just don’t fit well into my usual templates. A lot of the things in this room (and the room itself) are self made. The wash stand, towel racks, the tub fittings, towels, the window shade and bath mat are designed and made by my own (now chapped) hands. You’ll find a list of the bought props at the end of this post.

This room is supposed to be a quiet retreat for a relaxing bath, unhurried morning routines, sunlight and scents.

The floor boards creak a little. There’s a tree nearby, so add bird song to the ambient noise. It smells like warm wood, lavender, Laura’s favorite carnation scented soap and fresh towels.

And now pictures, please excuse the many similar looking ones- I have been playing with the light. I hope you like the tiny bath room as much as my girls 🙂

And since this is still a shared tiny home, the bath is shared as well.

And of course the tiny bath is nice and clean!

Bought props:

The (free) 3D toilet template from Badgerfashion on thingyverse, kindly printed by a friend. A bath tub (soap dish) and a tiny dollhouse lamp from Amazon. The basin is a “Lavabo clipbox”, this one as well as the tiny set of toiletries on the wash stand counter are from MICRO WORLD store on Aliexpress.

What you can see in the first picture are the top floor walls. Both bath and bedroom are half the size of the other two rooms, and their open sides face to the left and right, not to the front like the other rooms. The wall part with the slanted side is the divider between both rooms, they share the window. The wall with the two different colors and the sky light is going to be for both rooms as well.

I made the wood panels using wooden spatulas. They are thin, I have a mass of them, and they already have the width I wanted. I will paint them white.

And remember the weird Blythe hand part- beads- construction? It’s a bath faucet now. I decided against a shower head.

This is a picture from my now finished bath room (I will show that in the next post).

More furniture: This is a corner cabinet I made for the living room.

I wanted to put a tea service on display, but I forgot the teapot has a lid. It doesn’t fit on the shelves behind the glass doors. Stupid me. But I am sure the girls find something else they want to put there.

I will post first pictures of the bath room tomorrow.

And I almost forgot to show you the painted wash stand. There will be a mirror (I am thinking oval) and the two little lights (see picture below) over it, but I have not made that yet. What I did make is a little mat. I have almost no experience with crocheting, but since I wanted this oval mat I needed to learn how to do that. A customer gave me a book on how to crochet, but I always preferred knitting and never really tried. It turned out okay-ish, and I will make a larger one for the bath tub. I am so excited about my plans for the bath, I can’t wait until I get to that.

And I shortened the faucet. It still looks old fashioned, but it isn’t that dominant now.

I also built and painted the walls of the first two rooms. There will be the bath room and a tiny bed room on top of this.

A double- Kallax from IKEA is on it’s way, and I will mount the house on top of it. It’s much easier to work on things in the ground floor room (the kitchen) if it’s a bit higher. And I will have storage room in the basement, so to speak.

Not sure yet if I will put curtains on all windows. My whole apartment is a construction area, everywhere are painted things that need to dry, parts I have not finished. It’s fun, but I will be glad when everything is nicely assembled as far as the rooms go. The top floor will get a sloped ceiling as well as skylights.

Speaking of lights: I want a bit of light in this house, and bought one actual dollhouse lamp (the golden one), and a bunch of balloon lights. I didn’t even know those existed. Thank god for “related products” ;). Those thingies are battery powered LED lamps you can put in a balloon or hang in trees for party decoration. They come in varieties of light colors, flickering or steady light, some can be turned on and off, some can’t. After reading through descriptions carefully I ordered two different sets. The white lamps with the string are perfect to create ceiling lights. There’s a little piece of plastic you need to pull to turn them on, pushing it back in turns them off. They are actually quite bright, all of them. The tiny golden lamp will go in the bathroom. The other lights could be wall lamps or bed side lamps, I’ll see what I can do with them. All of these are from Amazon. I put the pin in the picture as a size reference.

I added to the height and made a counter – cooking without some space to prepare food isn’t fun.

And I started with furniture for the bathroom. This is the carcass of my newly built wash stand. I have not decided yet if I’ll paint it white or use color- I was thinking of grey. What do you think? And maybe I’ll shorten the faucet, it looks more like a kitchen sink faucet than a bath faucet.

And speaking of faucets: I need fixtures for my bathtub. This weird contraption is going to be part of it. It’s a mixture of thingies I found in one of my odds and ends boxes. The bar is a part of a Blythe-hand gesture set. I added two eyelets and beads on top of them, and the tap is a cable. The white thing was on one of my clothes hangers. I have not decided yet if I add a shower. If I can find an old pair of in-ear earphones, I might use one of those as a shower head. Thank god for silver spray 🙂

I have made the walls and windows, but they are not painted yet, so you get to see them later.

And I just decided to paint the wash stand medium warm grey with a white counter. Yes.

Did I mention I wanted to pile the rooms on top of each other? Well… Here’s a start. I want to build this in a way that will allow me to take out the floor in the middle. Whatever room goes on the ground floor, I need light to take pictures, and taking out the story above will certainly add some light.

And I will leave one side open. I am not sure yet which diorama will go on what floor. One will be the kitchen and one will be a rebuild version of my existing shared tiny house diorama. I want to use the top shelf for a bedroom/bathroom combination, both just half the size of the other rooms.

I have bought a pack of DIN A 2 (420 x 594mm) poplar-plywood. It’s great for projects like this, almost soft enough to cut it with a cutter and still sturdy enough to support the weight of doll furniture. It’s a bout 4mm thick. I wanted a wooden plank flooring look for this tiny house. I carved 2cm wide floor boards into the plywood first. I used a metal knitting needle for this. After carving the planks I used wood glaze to paint the grain, because I wanted them to look like individual floor boards.

I bought some stuff as well. One of my favorite shops to buy miniature food on Aliexpress is Micro-world store, I already found the tiny waffle maker there, and ordered some more food and a coffee maker. But it will take a while to arrive, Chinese New Year holiday is just over, and they are not yet shipped. Another favorite shop is called VBS-hobby, it’s a German language shop selling all sorts of hobby stuff. I found some tiny furniture (or rather plain wood storage boxes and a tiny set of drawers). They are the perfect size for Barbie. The tiny storage box has a transparent lid, so I will be able to use it as a storage box when it’s not a book case.

And I made a couple of miniatures. This is so much fun! I will have to make more. The tiny spice jars are just pieces of a chopstick, with a button glued on top. I made the tiny oven mitten. The black plant pot is part of a nail polish bottle cap. And I made tiny rolls of toilet paper. I found a Barbie toilet on thingyverse. A friend will print it for me, and I am really curious how it will look.

This is the progress I made since I wrote the last post. I hope I’ll be able to finish the kitchen within the next week – the paint job, that is. It will take a while until I have finished the complete rooms.

I would never have guessed that it is so difficult to find a decent looking kitchen for 1/6 dolls. And with decent I mean a kitchen that is not pink plastic – even though I ended up ordering one of those, because that was the only one I found that was actually available – and it was cheap. I could make one myself, but this time I want to give customizing this pink monstrosity a try.

I have seen quite a few nice make-overs of this plastic Barbie kitchen. But even that one is hard to find in Europe. The Americans are a bit better off, they can just buy the pink/silver “My modern kitchen” version at Walmart. Which is not quite so pink, but still plastic. And even though it is designed for Barbie, the counter height is not quite high enough.

Then there’s a red one, an even cheaper version of the “modern kitchen”, but it looks less customizable and the handles are huge. I found perfect looking Japanese Re-Ment kitchen pictures, but you can’t get them anywhere.

The only European company that offers something that would work with Barbie (if you add to the height) is Maileg. It’s a Danish company, and the furniture is made of painted tin. They are “trending”, and I guess you pay for the brand name. The kitchen is basically just a cooker and sink, and if you buy the fridge and washing machine to make it complete, you can easily spent 300$ for something, that IS adorable and beautifully designed in it’s own way, but not quite as mature looking as I would like, and the scale isn’t exactly right either. They have been designed to match the Maileg Mouse dolls in size.

After days of searching I have to come to the conclusion that there is no European company that produces (or imports) furniture sets like kitchens, living room furniture and other items in a size that is specifically designed to work with Barbies or other fashion dolls, Blythe, 1/6 BJD and 1/6 action figures. For the most part, Etsy is the only source of stylish and realistic furniture, and since a single artisan can only work at one piece at a time, the offers are limited. And shipping from Russia or the US plus tax can be really expensive.

But the work of Marina & Elena from WoodenTalesWorkshop, Rosa from DollRoomDecors or DreamStudioDollHouse is really beautiful.

Outside of Etsy? A couple of sofas, chairs and tables, most of them designed for action figures, that’s it. You can find them occasionally on Ebay or Amazon – or AliExpress. And you better read the description carefully. A lot are labeled as 1/6, but they turn out to be just 1/12.

And yet there are thousands of adult doll collectors who would love modern, mature looking furniture to photograph their dolls with. Not pink, not plastic, preferably as realistic looking as the many, many items in 1/12 dollhouse scale. Which are easy to find, affordable and arrive within days thanks to quick national shipping.

There are so many popular realistic looking mature dolls in a size around 30cm that it’s somewhat surprising no miniature furniture company seized the opportunity to bring more furniture to the market adult doll collectors would love.

If there was an established doll furniture company who would offer realistic looking wooden furniture kits (maybe even for self-assembly) in 1/6 scale, it would be a god send. And I am pretty sure they’d sell very well.

It would be perfect if the furniture would come as IKEA style DIY kits for self-assembly or even DIY painting, they would be easier to ship as well. But most of all it would be perfect if they were easy to find and readily available. If those wooden furniture cabinets would come with matching retro kitchen fridge fronts, tin sinks and in colors like off white, pastels like pistachio or light grey, I bet a company that produces them could sell A LOT of them.

I contacted a German company that makes beautiful wooden pretend play mini kitchen sets for kids, but I don’t know if anything will come off it. I’ll keep you posted. And of course I will post the progress I make with my endeavors to de-pink the plastic kitchen set.

I think I’ll end up building a 1/6 dollhouse. I don’t have any space for more dioramas, so I have to start to pile the rooms on top of each other.

With this room I decided to go for colorful and cute as far as the decoration is concerned. I hope the cute factor is not overwhelming, and it still looks like a room used by mature inhabitants. And this is actually the first room where my tiny china set looks in scale with the rest as well as the dolls.

But first things first:

Meet the inhabitants

Ancient Tales Rachel enjoys a cup of tea and a bit of afternoon quiet time.

The fashion dolls

My Kurhn, Xinyi and the Mengfan I recently added to the unstrung crowd. They still have their original faces, but I cut the Kurhn’s hair.

Blythe house

And Betty and Sylvie 🙂

I have to admit that I love how the Blythes look in this setting. That’s why you get to see loads of pictures with these little ladies. And I couldn’t resist the “Blythe house”. There actually is a real Blythe house, it’s a building in West Kensington that is used as an Archive for a couple of British Museums.

But since I acquired quite a couple of 1:6 scale dolls in the last three months I thought it’s time to make a new doll diorama in this scale. Thanks to previous woodworking endeavors I found all I needed in my box with small wood, dowels and left overs. My storage space is so limited that I decided to make just one wall, not a complete room box.

What I have in mind is wooden half-wall paneling in white, maybe with a shelf. Slate blue walls and white furniture. I want the basic colors to be neutral, so the couch will have slate blue or dark grey covers. To add some color there will be lots of pictures and cushions, flowers and all sorts of stuff. I will use wooden spatulas for the panels, they already have the perfect size and I have tons of them.

Of course I needed to build a couch, make the seats and covers, cushions and all sorts of props. Hours of work, two audiobooks and three pots of tea later the basics are finished. Please excuse the crappy pictures, it’s 12 am and so dark that I have to turn on the lights.

The seats are made of some foam pieces that were wrapped around one of the Raccoon doll boxes as additional padding. I am glad I kept it. I use to keep the original doll boxes, but not all the packaging material. I am really glad I made an exception for this stuff.

Lots of cushions. They are just about 6 x 6 cm, so I could repurpose some of my cabbage.

I finished the panels and the cushions.

I spent hours on making tiny picture frames. They are just cardboard, since they need to be lightweight. I went for a mix of cute and whimsical, most of the pictures are images I found on Pinterest.

I am almost done with all the props and furniture, and I can’t wait to start creating the room. I hope the weather will be a bit better the next couple of days to take pictures of the new room in 1:6 scale.