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.