A House of One's own

"A house of One's own" is basically going to follow my creative hobby, of building miniatures, starting with my very first ever wooden dollhouse. This wooden dollhouse is based off the one shown below; a little cardboard log cabin that I started creating because I was bored one evening, and too broke to really do anything. So I looked at the box, thought, "What if?" And log cabin number one was born.

The outside was done with $ store popsicle sticks that were colored with a mix of brown/green pencil crayon to give them a worn look. The rockwork is $store river rocks with white clay pushed in between them to give the look of mortar. I had no money so I had to use creativity and  ingenuity

The inside was also down with $ store material. Popsicle sticks were used for the wooden floor and  dowels for the log walls.

This particular house is yet to be finished, as it motivated me to move onto building a similar designed house, but in full wood.

With this desire I faced three main problems. 1. I had no wood working tools as I had never worked with wood before 2. I had no worskshop as I am living in a studio apartment. 3. I also had no  idea what I was doing.

I managed to conquer all three using some imagination ingenuity. My dad picked me up a sheet of mahogany wood, and I baught a cheap saw at the $ store. From there I managed to set up a blank space in the middle of my apartment, shoving the furniture to the side, where I could saw out the pieces I needed. I got most okay, but had a heck of a time getting the roof angles right. I believe I gave up with one side and just did it out of cardboad so I could trim it as I went. I have to say, though, working with wood was icredibly fun, and actually gave me a feeling of some connection to my biological logger grandfather who died when my mom was 14. He not only designed, but also built their family home himself. So now I follow in his footsteps, only building my house on the miniature scale.

For the front of the house I used cardboard because I didn't have the tools to cut out windows/doors from wood, and, being an artist for a living, had no money to buy said tools (for more about my art career I have a seperate blog here
http://www.abirdflyingnorth.blogspot.com.

With this house I really wanted real wooden floors, not just wooden floor paint or paper, so I  created them from popsicle sticks cut to size, and then covered in shelf lining that had a wood grain pattern.










The tiles at the front entrance are also done with shelf lining, but in a darker wood pattern. They were created by putting two cheap sheets of canvas paper together so they would be a thick as the popsicle stick floor, and then were cut into small squares and glued into place


 I am fairly new to this whole miniature world so if anyone has tricks or tips to share, feel free to leave comments. It's been fun to come back to an old childhood favorite playtime hobby.