Printables

Here are some newer 1/6 scale printables I have made. There are more in an earlier blog post. These first ones are some of my books and magazines that I scanned and resized. The two bigger books have some inside pages as well, but the rest have just blank pages inside as a filler.

I scanned, resized and printed some chocolate bar covers. The inside is a piece of cardboard and the gold wrapping is from the actual chocolate bar.

Here are some finished ones. I made these for a 1/6 scale shop set I used in shooting a photo story.

These are in 1/12 scale and I bought them as printed sheets and assembled them myself. I filled the packages with some decorative sand to make them sturdier.

Monster High mugs in 1/6 scale

When I made the heels for Monster High shoes using wooden cigarette holders, I was left with pieces of round wooden tubes and wondered what I could do with those. I decided to use them to make mugs for 1/6 scale sets. The heart-shaped plastic decorations are for making the handles.

Here are the tubes sawn into suitable length and the plastic pieces cut to shape.

Then I glued the handles in place, glued cardboard to the bottom of the mugs, and painted everything with white acrylic paint.

I found these small Monster High stickers the other day and thought they would be perfect for this purpose.

I applied one coat of glossy sealer, let dry, attached the stickers, and applied two more coats of sealer to get really glossy surface.

1/6 scale bar furniture

I have been making a 1/6 scale bar set in my bookshelf. I had a bar desk made of cardboard, but I wanted to have proper furniture for the new set.

First, here is the bar desk made mostly of balsa wood. The first photo shows it upside down before attaching the legs, so you can see the basic structure.

Then I added legs. The wooden strip in the front edge made the desk front heavy, so the front legs had to be attached right behind the strip.

Here is the finished desk painted with acrylic paint and the top has scrapbooking paper attached to it, because balsa wood was too soft for the top. The final stage was applying sealer all over.

The next piece is a small table with a tap and sink and it will be behind the desk, against the side wall. The table top is a piece of cardboard with wooden strips around it and a hole for the sink. The sink is from a package of 4 AA batteries.

Here is the same seen from below. I glued some pieces of wood and cardboard for support.

All the wooden parts are painted with acrylic paint, but for the sink, I used Revell paint meant for painting plastic scale models. The pipes are made of wood, except for the "S" piece, which is made of modeling clay. The white strips are made of cardstock and help to keep the pipes in place.

Here is a view from above. I made a hole in the bottom of the sink and carved a little hole in the "S" pipe. Then I painted the parts visible through the hole black.

The final step was to make a tap and attach it to the top, making sure it matches the location of the pipe underneath. The tap is made of modeling clay. I first made the curved part and baked it alone. Then I made the bottom part around it and baked the two pieces together. I made the hot and cold water taps separately, baked them and then glued them in place. Then I painted the assembled tap white using acrylic paint. Finally, I used a hole puncher to cut red and blue round pieces of paper and glued them on the taps. As the paint was matte finish, I applied sealer to get more dirt-resistant surface.

The third piece is a shelf for bottles and other items needed in a bar. This is a very simple structure made with wooden cigarette holders and pieces of cardboard. The first photo shows the upper and lower pieces after assembling them separately.

Here is the finished shelf in its place in the set. It only needed two coats of paint and one coat of sealer after assembly.

Furniture

Here are pictures of some furniture I have made. The first ones are in 1/12 scale.

This rocking chair came as a part of a kit, so I have only assembled and painted it.

The same kit also contained a dining table and chairs, which I painted and then decorated with some printed cardstock.

This chair is from a set of finished furniture made of untreated wood. I painted the parts that would remain visible and then covered the rest with fabric.

The next one is in 1/6 scale and mostly made of pieces that came in packages of Lundby dollhouse furniture and lights. The darker pieces are very dense and hard to saw, so the dimensions were primarily determined by the length of the pieces, so I wouldn't need to saw any more than was absolutely necessary.

Here is the finished bench.

Trunk for 1/24-1/12 scales

I have built a couple of 1/144 scale dollhouses from laser cut kits. The wood in those is very thin and the bits left over after removing the house parts can be used for various miniature projects. One of the things I have made using them is a trunk that fits several scales.

This is the trunk before painting. The black parts are cardstock, the lid is made of foamcore, the strips around the lid are leftover dollhouse skirting, and the rest of the wooden parts are from the dollhouse kits.

Here is the finished trunk with gold paint, some plastic decorations and a coat of sealer to keep the decorations secure.

1/6 scale wingback chair

Usually I make doll chairs using a pre-existing structure, such as a plastic bottle, cut to shape and then covered with felt and fabric. This time, however, I wanted to try a proper chair.

I started by designing the required parts. That's actually quite easy as only the sides need actual designing, the rest are just rectangulars, and the biggest challenge is in getting the length and width right. 

I cut the parts from cardboard (fairly thick, I think it came as a backing for mailed comics) and covered the insides with two layers of felt (glued in a few places to keep it in place). Note that I left some edges clear, those are the areas used for gluing the parts together.

Then I covered the pieces with wool fabric. I usually use thinner fabrics, but this suited the style of the chair best.

Here the parts are glued together to make the basic form. You can also see how the edges of fabric were cut into flaps and glued to the other side of the cardboard.

Next, I made the back piece, which is one continuous piece covering the sides and back of the chair. The cardboard pieces are actually a bit longer than the ones for the inside part for a reason I will explain later. I glued the cardboard pieces to the felt, leaving small gaps where they need to form 90 degree angles.

Next,I covered the outside of the back piece with a piece of the same wool fabric. I also glued some of that fabric to the bare parts of the already constructed "inner chair". That was to make a more even surface for gluing the back in place.

Then the back just needed to be glued in place. Here you can see why the outer pieces were longer. Once you make a rectangular piece to close the gap that will be left under the front edge of the seat, the seat will look thicker and the chair will look more authentic.

Here is a picture of the finished chair, with a doll to show the size. The legs of the chair are just round pegs cut to length, glued in place and painted brown.

Printables

As the cartridges for my old color printer would have cost more than an entirely new machine, I bought a HP Deskjet 1050 all-in-one. It replaced not only my old printer, but also the scanner.

Among the first items I made with it are these 1:6 scale printables from Jim's Printable Minis.

I also wanted to test the new scanner, so I scanned some of my magazines for 1:6 scale. Vogue had a black back cover, so I didn't scan it, but the others have the back cover as well.

I also scanned my crossword book and a cardboard package of chocolate and resized them to 1:12 scale.

I made a miniature version of Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur" with Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations. I made a smaller version first as it didn't need as many inside pages as the 1:6 scale version. The miniature version has a few pages from the beginning of the book, selected by how they would look in small scale, and about dozen pages starting from the first page of Chapter 1, which is the right side page here.

The inside pages are black and white (except the left side page here, which is grayscale), so I printed them with a laser printer on regular copy paper. Laser printer meant there was no need for fixative for these pages.

The cover was printed on cardstock. It looks a bit worn as I scanned the separate paper cover rather than the covers of the book. The book is so big that it was easier this way. The light parts of the cover are gold colored and that doesn't seem to print very well.

I have asked the current copyright holder, Random House UK, for a permission to make the files for this miniature book available for others. If I get the permission, the files will become available on my web site at some point.

Classroom desks and chairs

I realized I hadn't added these here. I needed a classroom setup for my photo story, so I had to make some desks and chairs. The table tops are made of pieces of cork left over from other projects and the vertical parts are made of wooden cigarette holders.

Here are the unfinished desks and chairs:

The wooden cigarette holders belonged to my uncle and my father saved them for me when cleaning the house after my uncle passed away.

Here are the finished pieces in the classroom set, which is just a temporary one, set up inside a painted plastic container.

Making miniature stone statues for a dollhouse

These little cats came with Petite Catwalk Kitties. As I bought a couple of Chases, I got two similar cats and decided to use them as decorations on both sides of the door of the Birchfield house.

Here I have attached them into a piece of wood using mirror mounting tape to make painting easier. As the tape is fairly thick, the cats do not touch the base and that ensures the paint won't make them stick to it.



The next stage is painting the cats with a "stone" color. Anything from off-white to beige and even some darker shades are suitable for this. I used solvent-based paints as the cats are made of hard plastic and can take it.



The final stage is blackwashing. Take some white spirit (or turpentine) and add a drop or two of black paint in it (if you use water-soluble paints, use water instead). The amount of paint depends on how much of it you want on the surface of the statue, that is, how old and dirty the statue should look like. This takes some experimenting to get it right. Then just apply a coat of the mixture to the statue and let it dry.

Dollhouse for a dollhouse with working lights

I used a dollhouse wardrobe to make a large dollhouse for a 1/12 scale dollhouse. I added shelves to create the separate floors and added one wall upstairs to divide it into a bedroom and bathroom. Then I made holes in the back wall for installing lights, which are a string of Christmas lights in 1/12 scale.

The next picture shows how the lights were installed. As I only needed 10 lights inside the house, I attached the extra two lights under the house to provide additional lighting for the room in which this dollhouse will be placed. Of course, I could have made two holes for the living room, for example, and installed 4 lights there.

Then I furnished the house. I used pieces of pictures found in magazines for wallpaper and other decorations. The furniture is made of cast metal. Some pieces were ready painted when I bought them, some I have painted myself.

Dollhouse kitchen

I found a method for keeping the fridge doors closed. A hobby shop had this thin magnetic sheet you can cut to desired shape and size.

Here is the fridge painted and magnets in place. When you cut the magnets, you need to cut one side first, then place it against the sheet to find a place for cutting the opposite part.

The last piece missing from the kitchen was the oven. I made it using balsa wood. The basic structure is very simple.

The glass on the oven door is a piece of overhead transparency.

The hinge is made of thin cardboard. That is the easiest way of making a hinge and it is durable enough after it has been painted as the oven door is very light. I used the same method for the fridge. I used magnets for keeping the oven door closed.

The cooking plates are pieces of black rubber and the grey buttons are from buttons of an old remote control.

I know there are different types of ovens, but I'm used to having an electric one, so that was the easiest for me to make.

Here is a picture of the entire kitchen.