WHAT YOU NEED

If you really want to try out how much talent and imagination you have, you should definitely make some very easy and small pieces of furniture out of scratch. What you need to remember is this : never ever throw anything away. Always keep a little stock of cheap wood, easy to cut with simple tools. Once you start cutting, don't throw away the pieces, you might need those later. Try to look around in your place, ask your friends and family for stuff like little jewellry findings, buttons, beads, pins, cotton, fabric, anything. And even if you have to buy those, they are still not as expensive as a finished piece of furniture. Try to keep a little stock of spindels, newel posts, balusters, brackets, cornice moldings, picture frames, available at your local dollhouse or hobby shop. Once you have a little stock of those, you can start doing anything that comes to your mind, with the little help of some tools of course. I'm lucky to have the proxxon miniature tools (www.proxxon.com) to work with. Most of them were presents from my hubby or my parents. And keep one thing in mind : even if you finish a piece and don't like it, it's not a big deal to throw it away, since it was not very expensvie. But still, try to have patience, read books, try to learn and keep on trying until you achieve something you like to put in your dollhouse.

The dresser you see on this picture was made from leftovers I kept after cutting some wood for another project, round basic trim, cornice molding. I added a little lace on one of the lower sections. Then I printed a picture of a typical italian tuscan house, printed it on transparent paper and glued it to the top wall of the dresser. After adding a few miniatures, I was very pleased with the result and the choice of colors went with the red sofa and chair I had already made. After finishing this dresser, the ideas kept coming and I already knew exactly how my finished living room would look once completely furnished.

Take a look at the rest of the stuff .......

This fish tank has a working light inside and looks absolutely fabulous once it gets dark outside and I turn on the lights in my mini world. It really gives the impression that these fishes are swimming around.

The stand is made out of scratch. Here again I used left-overs of wood, round trim, moudings, picture frames. I used slightly bigger beads for the feet and glued a red ceramic tile in the middle, for my plant.

I you would like to have more details, I will be happy to answer any of your questions.

Another very easy to make project : coffee table with glass top. Here I just used a square piece of wood, four spindles (heads cut off of course) and the "glass" top is plexiglass, available in many sizes and forms in any craft shops.

Until I knew how to do those myself, I always purchased this kind of furniture. But then I discovered a book by Freida Gray "Easy to make 1/12 dollhouse furniture" and see for yourself : even the cats love it. As you can see, a " first try " is not always perfect, but even Rome wasn't built in a single day, so be patient and enjoy whatever you achieve.

These pieces are made of thick balsa wood (about 8-10 mm), covered with some fabric given to me by a friend, who knew she wasn't supposed to throw anything away before asking me if I didn't need it. I followed the instructions in the book and I realized it wasn't so difficult to make a piece of furniture on my own. The only thing you have to pay attention to when working with glue and fabric : not every glue can be used to glue fabric, it may turn out to be a very messy job and ruin your entire project. Better read the instructions on the glue before use or ask for help at your local hobby or craft store.

NEVER EVER THROW ANYTHING AWAY. Just get used to keep as much stuff as possible in a box some place, because one day, you might need it to complete a miniature job.

This hanging wall shelf was made of a few pieces of wood. When I build my first Del Prado house, all the furniture came pre-cut, looking like big a jigsaw puzzle. This curved top you see here is a left-over from the bed, meant to be thrown away. I kept if and used it here. The rest of the pieces are simple rectangular wood parts, about 3-4 mm thick. I painted two very small round basic trim with black acrylic color and glued them to the front. The little gold painting on the side can be added either with a gold pen or with the stenceling technique. Once all the pieces are painted and glued together, all you need to do is give the whole thing a coat of stain (available as spray, much easier to apply) to make it more shiny.

This pidnic table is made out of balsa wood. I found the project in an older issue of my A.M. Magazine. It was a lot of fun decorating the table to make it look like if the party is already going on.

.... A little out of the ordinary bed-side table.

It's always useful to keep a little stock of posts, spindles and balusters, available from any dollhouse store. In this project, I used different objects, such a s a big newel post, an oval piece of wood and a picture frame. First I cut off the top of the newel post. Then I glued the oval picture frame to the oval piece of wood, cutting the sides to make it fit. Then I glued this to the newel post and added some color. Here again, I came out with the idea while looking through what I had left-over and I made 2 bedside tables out of the ordinary.

Since the lady of this house had a huge collection of perfume bottles, she definitely needed a curio cabinet. And my new living room furniture started to have its very own special look and the best part is of course that these pieces are unique.

So much for details ......... unfortunately, my living room wasn't big enough and since I didn't want to put too much furniture in one room, I really had to stop after making these 2 small items, a flower stand and a waste/paper basket.

For the flowers stand, I cut 4 pieces of either square or round basic trim, about 6-7 long. Then I used a simple square piece for the top. You may use either left-overs from picture frames or small mouldings to glue around that top. Same for the bottom. I also had some pre-cut tiles left over from a previous project. Since I already used those on the curio cabinet for my perfume bottle collection, I wanted to make all the furniture look alike. The waste-basket is made with the same technique. I even filled it with paper, to give it a more realistic touch.

With 5 simple pieces of wood, you can easily make this umbrella stand. After painting this one green, I wanted to add a little "crazy youch" to it, so I simply used self adhesive cut outs. Sometimes, even simple things look fine .

Table Top with "découpage technique"

Once I assembled the table (here again, I just used a few pieces of scratch), I started to cut out those flowers, often available on self-adhesive paper in some crafts shops (you can of course print them yourself and cut them out exactly the same way). You need to cut out very tiny little pieces. If the paper you use is not self adhesive, I use a simple trick not to have to use glue, since this can be a very messy job with such small pieces : I used double sided tape, one side glued to the table of course and using the second side to glue my découpage flowers to.

Table Top with "tile technique"

This little table was done in about 1 hour. I used 4 spindles I had left over from another project, 2 square pieces of wood, the second one a little smaller, glued right under the top before adding the legs, glued everything together and used Delft-Tiles (paper sheet) to cover the top.

Table Top with "Mosaic Technique"

This table top was made with the so-called mosaic technique. First, you assemble the table using either a square, rectangular or round piece of wood (your choice of course), 4 spindles, paint and again double-sided tape. Then you cut out very small slices of different colors of card paper and cut all of them in very tiny little pieces (not more than 5 mm, to keep the entire thing at the right scale) and cover the entire table top (with the tape on it of course) with those little bits of colored paper. You better use a pair of fine tweezers here, those pieces are definitely too small to fit in your fingers, believe me.

Another Table Top with "tile technique" 2

After making this table with a piece of wood for the top and four spindles, I glued 6 real ceramic tiles to the top. The design you can see on 3 of my tiles are printies. I printed the design on transparent paper (same size as the tiles, of course) and glued them on. I added a little border from a special trim I had and added some color. This entire project should not take more than 1 hour to accomplish.

This potting table was also made with leftover pieces of wood and 4 spindles. I always carry a little stock of all sorts of spindels, because they are very useful if you wanna make tables, chairs or other simple pieces of furniture.

This cute little chair was made out of a pattern I found in an issue of my Dollshouse World Magazine. All you need is to cut out the patterns (you might wanna make copies before cutting them out, just in case), find some suitable fabric and a little trim that goes with out and follow the instructions.

I would recommend using a special fabric glue, to avoid glue stains on your fabric.

This little project is also available at www.dollshous.tv, Joyce Dean will guide you through the entire process.

If you need the pattern, feel free to email me and I'll gladly send it to you : danyslittleworld@yahoo.com

It's the same pattern ....... I just used fine leather instad of traditional fabric. Looks a little more sophisticated. I used in as a nice addition to my BAR in the Grosvernor Hall.

This little shelf is a very simple piece of furniture from EUROMINIS. Unfortunately they stopped doing business, which is very sad for european miniaturists, because they had a vaste range of furniture and accessories in 1:12 scale, especially these little pieces of furniture already assembled, but not yet painted.

The crackling is quite an easy thing to do. First you apply one coat of acrylic paint (after sanding of course) (this coat does not need to be perfect, since it will be completely covered up later). This first coat will be the color that will be visible through the crackles later. You need to let it dry completely.

After is has dried, you apply a coat of ALEENE'S QUICK CRACKLE product, available at some online dollshouse/miniature stores. You need to let that coat dry completely again. It might take up to 1-2 hours, more or less.

The last step is to apply the final color and you will almost immediately see the crackling. Just be careful not to apply too much paint in this last coat, otherwise your crackles will be completely covered up.

For this little piece of furniture, I started with WHITE as a first coat and, as you can see, the final coat was a bright red. I used in the little conservatory that goes with my italian villa, since it had a complete makeover recently.

This little table to put the TV on was again made entirely from scratch. I had a few Black/White tiles left over from an older project and used some of those here for the table top.

Another little piece of furniture I learned how to make from dollshouse.tv. This is really an easy project, also for beginners to the hobby. Although I decided here to use fine leather instead of fabric, but this is entirely up to you.

As you can see, the possibilities of what you can do with your leftover wood are endless. Here's another example of a small table I made. The top is made with tiny little rectangular pieces/stones that I found one day in a hobby shop. At the time I did not know what to do with them, but I bought them anyway.

Even though this little wall shelf here has been made out of scratch, that doesn't mean it couldn't look nice ................. so I added those tiles (which are not real tiles, but printies) and I think this add's a nice little touch to it.

Since my Grosvernor Hall is such a huge house, I had plenty of rooms in the basement to furnish and I when the idea first came up to add a home bar to my house, I instantly knew I would give it try to build one myself before spending money on a kit or a finished product.

This is the result, it's well filled and there is a light right above the sink, which, at the time this pic was taken, was not yet connected.

This is the finished piece, with the counter and the bar stools.

It's not perfect, but I love it, because I did it myself. And that's the whole point in being a hobby miniaturist. It doesn't always need to be perfect, but it's always worth the effort. Even though a first try sometimes ends up in the trash ......... doesn't matter. Just give it a second try and it'll will most certainly work out fine. Just don't give up.