Saturday 21 March 2015

My first Brownie badge! Shoe box dolls house

I love making things and love a challenge. A few weeks ago my manager at work asked if I wanted to help her with a task they were doing at Brownies to make a dolls house out of shoe boxes. I was more than happy to help and she delivered the shoe box house to my car and that evening my mind went into overdrive thinking of all the things I had in my craft room and what I could turn them into for a dolls house. 

The shoe box house was made up of two boxes on top of each other and a lid at the side. I decided I'd make the side the entrance door, the bottom box a kitchen and living room, and the top floor a bedroom. 

The first room I started on was the kitchen as I used a Debbi Moore CD which had a 3D kitchen card box, by manipulating the graphics I was able to make a wooden floor, and 3D shelves. I then made a kitchen unit and glued it in place. I then went off on a tangent and made a vase and flowers from some beads I had and glued this to the kitchen units.

For the living room I just covered the walls using some DoCrafts scrapbook paper that had a wallpaper like print then made a sofa using my Crafters Companion Big Score board. The sofa was made up of 4 small boxes; the largest for the main body and seat, 2 identical small squares for the arms and a long thin box for the sofa back. I covered these with patterned paper then glued them together with my glue gun (so they dried quickly and firmly)

The light in this room was a mirror ball Christmas decoration (Rachel gave me it with the shoe boxes and said about using it as a light)

I then set to work on the bedroom. The wallpaper was some lovely Kaisercraft scrapbook paper with a poppy design. I made the bed by making a rectangular box, then made the headboard and bottom using a wrought iron shape with my Cricut Explore, but as I wanted it solid  I manipulated it so I only had the main outline. I cut two of the headboard and bottom so I could glue the card together to make it stronger. I got my sewing machine out and made a little duvet and pillows from Tilda fabric squares in my stash. For the duvet I put some wadding inbetween to give it a nice feel, and stuffed the pillows with toy stuffing.

I then made a set of drawers and used Craftwork candi as the knobs.

For the light I used some white glitter card wrapped round a circle to make a cylinder, edged it with a thin piece of paper that matched the wallpaper and glued some tigertail wire (from my jewellery making stash) for it to hang from.

My Cricut really came in handy with this project as I found a curtain shape with I used in each room and for the windows themselves I printed a countryside scene onto a4 and cut out views for the bedroom and downstairs. 

I showed my friend at work and she asked where the toilet was so I decided to add in a bathroom by the front door. As this was going to be in the lid I couldn't really use anything 3D as it would stick out so I found a picture of a toilet and sink, imported them into Cricut Design Space and used the print and cut feature. These were then stuck to the wall and I added in a toilet roll made of white ribbon wrapped round a paper clip (so it looked like a toilet roll holder) and some fabric wrapped over a paper clip (to look like a towel).

To separate the toilet from the entrance I made a partition using a thin piece of card.

I'm so please with how it turned out and so was Rachel. I earned a toy maker badge for my help which was lovely as I only went to brownies once and hated it as they were making straw dolls and o couldn't get the hang of it and I was confused about it all. I'd been to rainbows previously but didn't like that as it was just a lot of running round (which isn't great when you have Muscular Dystrophy).

The shoebox dolls house now has now gone to a good home, a colleague at works daughter now has it to play with which is lovely.

I always wanted a dolls house and a great uncle made one for me but died shortly after and his daughter decided she wanted to keep it so I never got it so it was lovely doing this and if I had the space I would love to get a dolls house and decorate it properly. 

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Floral Earphone Case


My friend at work asked me the other day if I could make her an earphone case for her Mum for Mothers Day. I've had a busy run up to Mothers Day having to make 4 cards inbetween decorating a shoebox dolls house and housework. 

I had a look on Pinterest for inspiration as I was originall going to make a fabric envelope type thing, but found a circular zip case which looked cute. It was from the blog Dog Under My Desk. Luckily I had a dark green zip (which I had brought by mistake thinking it was black online) and looking in my fabric stash I had some lovely Tilda squares of green flowery material. 

I love how it turned out but wish I could have stitched all the way round the case to finish it off but the layers plus the zip were really thick so I couldn't top stitch over the zip end.