The snozberries taste like snozberries!

My Mom gave me all of these scraps of wallpaper that came out of one of those huge wallpaper sampler albums and I'm still trying to go through them all. Some of them are too big for dollhouse scale, but I think there are plenty that I could scan and scale down. As I perfect the scale I'll post them here that way anyone who wants to can use them as printies. I don't know if you can see the detail on the top piece in the middle stack of wallpaper, but anybody remember, "the snozberries taste like snozberries!?" It totally reminds me of the wallpaper in that scene from Willy Wonka! And no, tempted as I might have been I did not lick the paper!

And as I posted before I fell out of love with the wallpaper that I had already put up on the 2nd floor of the saloon. This pic shows the start of my messy removal of the paper. And yes, the house is upsidedown - I was putting my second coat of eggshell paint on the ceiling of the top floor and the first coat on the ceiling of the bottom floor. Once again using free leftover paint from my parent's house and I don't think anyone but me will be looking at the ceilings anyway :) And here is a scan of one of the wallpaper samples that I absolutely adore!!! It already looks like perfect scale to me and I love every one of the colors! Since I've already decided to go with a totally different theme for the saloon (maybe even an upstairs brothel - gasp!) I thought this would be perfect for a "ladies" room upstairs.

Goodbye to the weekend

Can't believe the weekend is already over! David and I did a ton of cleaning around the apartment this weekend - although not all of it was planned.  Our washing machine overflowed - we were alerted to the problem by my downstairs neighbor pounding on the door!  After all that mess I even had some time to work on my dollhouse. I used Skinny Sticks ($2.48 a bag @ Wal-Mart) and started putting down flooring in the bottom floor of the saloon. The Elmer's Probond glue worked wonders and held even the bowed sticks flat. I really started liking the look and I think it actually looks better than the sheet of wood flooring that I bought from Hobby Lobby ($9.99/sheet). I laid one of the Hobby Lobby sheets down beside the section of Skinny Sticks to show you the difference. The Hobby Lobby sheets are all one long section and don't look very realistic. The Skinny Sticks are maybe 5-6 inches long and when laid end to end look like a real floor. I went back to Wal-Mart and bought 3 more bags - they're way cheaper and look much better I think. Oh well, lesson learned. I've also changed my mind about what I want to do with the upstairs of the saloon. Now I'm not sure that I like the wallpaper that I put up, but given that I'm a beginner I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to get it off now! And at first I thought I wanted the upstairs to sort of be an apartment for the family that runs the saloon, but now I'm not so sure. I was watching Deadwood with David the other day and in one scene the tavern owner fires a pistol into the ceiling to get the attention of the crowd. No family (or Mother at least) is going to want to live above a saloon - it would be noisy anyway, right? I found some fabulous dolls on ebay that I would love to get for the saloon, but with money being for bills and household expenses right now it will just have to wait. I'm going to try to do as much as I can with what I've already bought and maybe a couple paychecks from now buy some new supplies. Oh and I included a pic of my newly cleaned workspace. I was so proud of myself - it's all organized and you can actually see the floor again!!!

Trying my hand at printies

Here are some printies that I scanned out of a http://www.whatonearthcatalog.com/ catalog. I thought they would be cute to use in my saloon. For some reason they look bigger when I uploaded them here, but if you save them onto your computer and then insert them into a word document you can always select the picture and use the arrows to shrink them. Also my computer has a Microsoft Picture Viewer program that lets you shrink pictures by percentages. I used some basswood to make the porch sign more sturdy and it will hang somewhere outside the saloon. I thought the Ben Franklin quote could maybe go inside. I'll have to decide though b/c Franklin lived from 1706 - 1790 and the Sears catalog below has a date on it of 1897. I wonder if Franklin's quotes were popular just 100 years after his death?

I thought the Sears Roebuck catalog was especially cute. I would like to maybe include an outhouse behind the saloon. Here's some cute info that I found out about toilet paper while sitting at the doctor's office the other day.

"It was once common practice in rural America to leave a corncob hanging from a string in the outhouse for purposes of personal hygiene. Apparently the reason to hang it on a string was so that the cob (could) be reused - yuck. Some parts of the country that were flush with corncobs might provide a box of disposable cobs."

"Corncobs and pages torn from newspapers and magazines were commonly used in the early American West. With the rise of the Sears Roebuck company - a catalog company, pages from the catalog were used. As with the cob, the catalog (would) be hung on a string in the outhouse and pages were torn off as needed. When Sears began printing color pictures in the catalog earlier in the 20th century the use of coated stock, which was nonabsorbent, was a source of great concern to farm families, and even produced such humorous spin-offs as the "Rears and Sorebutt" catalog. The Farmer's Almanac had a hole in it so it could be hung on a hook and the pages torn off easily."

- Family Pastime Magazine April 2009 "Yucky News" by I. M. Yuckee (no clue if that is real name or not)

I do not own the copyright to these products, please do not sell or distribute these images - they are for personal use only. I scanned these from magazines, products I bought for my home, layouts, etc. If they are printies from another person's website I will always try to include their info also.

Beaded curtain

I thought I'd share some projects that I'm working on other than my dollhouse and my minis. I'm making a beaded curtain out of beer bottle caps and hemp. I haven't worked on this in a while, but since the 2nd bedroom has become my sort of craft station I thought I would pull these back out as well.

I've resorted all of the different caps into bags and an empty egg carton so I can make the strands as random as possible. Also as you can see they are sort of out in the middle of the floor - I figure the more I trip over them the more I'll think about working on the curtain. I'm going to attempt to finish a strand a week.

One of David's friends who goes to music festivals with us thinks that I should sell these if I could make enough of them. Depending on how well this first one turns out I may ask a friend of mine who works at a local bar to start keeping their caps for me. I think with enough caps I could make an entire curtain of just Budweiser, or Rolling Rock, or Land Shark (one of my new favorites!) And just in case you were wondering - no, I didn't drink all of these myself. Our apartment tends to be the hangout place for friends and since we recycle the bottles I initially just wanted to find another use for the caps. Here's a small view of the cabinets in our kitchen.

I attached a hook to the cabinet and hung this bucket directly under the bottle opener as a simple way to collect all of the caps. You can't see it in this pic, but my recycling bins for glass, plastic, aluminum, and cardboard are under this cabinet also. I find if you make recycling as easy as possible then it's easier to get the men in your life to do it also!

New treasures for the saloon

Just a quick post today and a new pic to share. These are my new minis that I bought with my $25 Amazon bucks. They came from http://www.dollhousesandmore.com/ and I think they are just great for my saloon! I don't particularly care for the labels on the wine bottles so I may do my own for those. And I can't wait to stuff the little gold cash register full of all that money I cut out! I think I will put XXX on at least one of the corn liquor jars also. Maybe I'll have a sort of hillbilly jugband playing in the corner near the piano! I'll need a metal washboard and an overturned metal washtub with a bow on top! The scissors will be part of my Mom's scrapbooking roombox whenever I get to work on that again and you can't see it as well in this pic but the other item is a brass spittoon - it will go right outside the swinging saloon doors!

Dollhouse bedroom

Here are a couple new pics of the upstairs bedroom in my saloon dollhouse. David's friend cut the molding pieces into 45 degree angles for me and then I stained them and also some popsicle sticks that I'll cut and use for the baseboards.

And here is a pic of the bedroom wallpaper. I haven't glued the flooring down yet and the partition isn't attached yet either. I still have to cut the paper out where the window goes. I think it will all look very nice once the crown molding and baseboards are up.

I used some old paint that my parents had leftover in their basement to go ahead and paint the upstairs ceilings. It was Sherwin Williams Pro Mar 200 Interior Latex Eg-Shel. I thought it would look much nicer than just white.

DIY minis

I'm trying to save money any way that I can with my dollhouse. I found these minis in my old shadowbox that is still hanging up at my Mom's house. They were actually made to hang on a fridge and had magnets on the bottom of the pot and the skillet. I used a knife to take those off, which scratched them a little, but as long as they're not hanging on the wall you won't be able to see it. The cup stand is missing a cup though, no telling where it got to after all of these years. And I was doing some searching online trying to find a DIY tutorial on how to make dollhouse tables and chairs when I came across a vague reference -

"BOTTLES, ANTIQUE: Would you believe it! There's old-fashioned glass bottle shapes inside of light bulbs...different bulbs have different shapes. Caution! Practice good safety! Protect your eyes and hands when working with broken glass!!"

I found this at http://dollhouseminiaturesclub.freeservers.com/tipsaf.htm

We've already switched over most of our bulbs to the new compact fluorescents, but I did still have a couple old bulbs laying around. I didn't have any gloves or any glass cutting tools so my first attempt was kind of messy. I'd like to get some sort of glass cutting tool and also one of those crystal savers to file down the sharp edges and then try this again. On another note I did find a neat website that tells you how to hollow out a light bulb (you would not want to to this if you were trying to keep the piece inside b/c you have to break it to hollow out the bulb) http://www.teamdroid.com/diy-hollow-out-a-light-bulb/. And here's a neat pic where somebody hollowed out bulbs and used them as flower vases. http://www.craftbits.com/viewProject.do?projectID=886. I'm definitely going to try this next b/c I think it's a great way to recycle used bulbs and it would look pretty hanging in a window.

Dollhouse wallpaper,molding, and flooring

I finally found some printie wallpaper that I like for the upstairs bedroom. On my computer screen the background looked more beige, but when it printed it out it had a purple tinge to it. I wasted three sheets of cardstock paper before I finally gave up and decided the purplish color would have to do. This picture is before I put the clear sealer on the pages. I bought 4 of these wood strips from Michael's and I think I'm going to use it as the crown molding around the tops of the rooms. I'll use the Honey Pine stain on these.

And here is a pic of the wood flooring that I bought from Hobby Lobby. The bottom piece is how it comes in the packaging and the top is a test run using the Honey Pine stain. I think I'll use it upstairs b/c whoever lives up there definitely keeps a clean house. The floor downstairs in the saloon will have a more worn and used look.