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 toscan house, printed it on transparents paper and glued it to the top wall lf 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 .......

Until I knew how to do those myself, I always purchased this kind of furniture all finished. 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 of 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.

This fish tank has a working light 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 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.

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 botton. 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.

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.

These 2 wardrobes used to look exactly the same. But for my italian house, I decided to make the bedroom look different and sanded it long enough to take away all the wood paint and stain. It is a messy job, but that's what you need to do if you want to give a piece of furniture a total new look. By adding white primer and a few coats of white, new handles, which you need to remove anyway before sanding (these here are made of different kinds of beads) and a few handpainted flowers, I had a totally different look and complete new piece of furniture.

Window Inserts ! Easier than you might think : once you have found an insert (the Internet is a good source here, try searching miniature sites first) that you would like to have in your windows, copy the picture to your PC, scale it down to the right size and print on transparent paper. Cut out and use very little super glue (especially for glass). By the way, the paintings on the wall are made the same way.

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 "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.

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

It's always useful to keep a little stock of posts, spindles and balusters, available from any dollhouse store. In this project to make a bedside table, 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 come 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.

This piece of furniture was painted in dark mahagony, but I just didn't have any use for it. So I decided to sand off all the stain and paint and start all over again. What I did first was spraying the whole thing with a metal looking color, paying attention no to cover it completely. Then I used the "sprinkle" technique, dipping my brush in different colors and sprinkling the color on the furniture. I suggest you put on plastic gloves to achieve this, otherwise you won't be able to get rid of the colors unders your fingernails for several days.

Finally, after sprinkling different colors and to give the top of this sideboard a nice finishing touch, I took a very fine brush and moved it around slowly in circles. You may of course use other techniques, like using a sponge, which gives a very nice effect too. I also use that coloring technique (with sponges) to apply color to my walls.

This bed was initally painted in dark brown and here again, I had to sand off all the old color and stain first. I then added a first coat of white primer, the two coats of white acrylic color. The bed posts had to be blue, just like the rest of the furniture in my italian bedroom is white and blue. I painted the little flowers to the top and added a few beads. To give it a final touch, I glued some lace to the sides all around and added a piece of moulding, in which I filled the holes with tiny little beads. You can always choose to give your furniture a final coat of shiny stain, that's up to you, wheater you like it that way or not.

Doesn't that little bed look iniviting to take a little nap ? Well, the cat mommy and her kittens thought so.

If you have several shelfs you would like to fill with books, it may be a little expensive to buy all those books, don't you think. Well, here's my tip to make them yourself.

On any "miniature printables" website, you will find book covers to print out and they are already at the right scale. Print those on simple white paper, using the "best quality" option on your printer, and cut them out. If you followed my previous advice and didn't throw away left-overs from other projects, I'm pretty sure you have some pieces of wood somewhere, of difference thickness. Just cut them to the size to fit the cut-out book covers and glue them together.

A very simple and very cheap way to make your own books. And once you put the in your bookshelf, you'll be surprised how good they will look.

With 5 simple pieces of wood, you can make a very simple 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 .

The birdhouse itself in this case was a simple print-out from Jim's Printables. All you got to do is print it on something slightly stronger than simple paper or, if you print it on paper, glue it to some thin cardboard before gluying the pieces together.

I made the stand for the birdhouse out of my "wood lefts-overs" box, painted it, added a little greenery and dried flowers.

A very helpful book with lots of easy to do projects, even for beginners. All you need are a few basic tools and some wood and fabric, colors and brushes, sanding paper and a little imagination.

Another helpful books, but maybe not the one I would give to beginners to the miniaturist hobby. You should take your first steps with something easier.