|
Post by samantha on Apr 24, 2020 6:18:40 GMT
Wow this is amazing, and thank you so much for the guide! I really want to get my crafting stuff organised and have a go at something similar 😀
|
|
|
Post by maisiemou on Apr 26, 2020 11:02:03 GMT
Wow that caravan is fantastic! I feel really inspired to have a go now, I'd looked at similar caravans on dolls house sites but they are very expensive, I can't believe it was just a cardboard box!
|
|
|
Post by astudyinscarlet on Apr 26, 2020 14:04:07 GMT
Really you can make anything look good if you stick enough lolly sticks onto it. LOL Here's another bigger 'make' which I've just completed - Jack's stable with mini tack room. Made from a cardboard box, foam board, lots of lolly sticks and wooden drinks stirrers and some wooden strips (I think sold as dolls house floorboards. They were quite cheap as they're quite rough. I got them from ebay) and some textured wooden sheeting I happened to get in a dolls house lot ages ago (but you can just use wooden stirrers or lolly sticks and it looks just as good). The main building is a small cardboard box with some foam board added for the tack room section. Most of the outside is covered in lolly sticks and wooden stirrers except the lower section of the front which is the textured wooden sheeting. The roof is made from foamboard sections joined down the centre with masking tape, lined on the inside with wooden stirrers and the tiles are dolls house wooden strip ones I bought but you can make your own easily from thin card or foam sheets (I did use foam sheets to make the top ridge tiles and those on the tower). The tower is cardboard covered in lolly sticks and the clock faces are jewellery charms with the top loops chopped off. The weathervane is taken from a Grand Champions wash stall. The windows are upcycled old Sylvanian families ones with plastic cut from some packaging added. The doors are made from balsa and MDF pieces with lolly sticks on top, the latches and bolt from tiny eye screws and wire. The no smoking sign I found online, resized and printed off and painted with clear nail varnish. The smaller black planters are old Playmobil drawers, painted. The decorative horseshoe hook is a horseshoe charm with a wire hook stuck into the ring. The guttering is dolls house wooden trim with foam sheet brackets and the drainpipe (there's one on the back also made in the same way) is a drinking straw with brackets made from tiny pieces of balsa and strips of thin plastic. the curved sections at the top are from this plastic toy thing I found (they were these curved plastic tube sections which connected together). The bit those connect into and the part at the bottom are random plastic pieces out of my stash of interestingly shaped random plastic pieces I save in case they come in useful some day. The white planter was made from offcuts of the textured wood panelling. All the plants are little pieces from the bigger artificial ones I got from ebay.
Inside the tack room: And from the other side with the lights on:
The walls are lined with dolls house floorboard strips and the floor is textured tile-effect paper, varnished. The saddle racks are made from children's wooden blocks (longer rectangle one on top, shorter cube one underneath as a support, but shaped a bit using a stanley knife to take off the edges and corners). The wooden storage box holds the battery for the lights and is made from dolls house floorboards and wood scraps. The lights are self adhesive LED strip lights (I linked to the sort I mean a few posts back) stuck on a lolly stick with some semi-opaque plastic cut from an old notebook cover over the top. The bridle hooks are push pins backed with strips of balsa. All the window ledges etc are offcuts of wooden rods or strips. I've included some of the trophies and rosettes etc I made recently. The shelf is a dolls house one which I got unpainted. The rug is an upholstery fabric scrap and the rubber mat was cut from the rubber matting from the Schleich horse wash stall. The picture frame is a Barbie one or something like that painted silver with a picture cut from a catalogue stuck into it. Hello! (Here's Jack with the lights in his stable on. This lighting strip is stuck up in the roof and the battery slots into a wooden box I made from MDF offcuts, attached to the inside front of the roof) Side. The step was an MDF one from a lot of dolls house bits and pieces. The hanging baskets are a kids plastic golf ball cut in half, painted, with chain from some old jewellery attached. The brackets for them are bead end caps with a thick pieces of wire stuck into them. The big black planters are made from plastic pieces from a Sylvanian Families cart for the fronts, and MDF scraps. The door is an offcut of the textured wood panel and wood strip offcuts. The hinges are painted plastic ones sold for remote control aeroplanes. I bought the wall planters and the door handle although I coloured it silver because I've only ever found brass ones. Stable inside (lined with wooden drinks stirrers and using square wooden dowel (from spent fireworks); craft foam flooring to (sort of) look like rubber matting (and protect Julips' feet). The straw is a yellow cardboard folder cut up into very fine strips. The netting over the window is cut from one of those grid mats you buy for cooking (to put under food on a baking tray so it doesn't stick). The haynet was an old Ponies in Miniature one. The tie up rings are made from jump rings and tiny eye screws.
|
|
|
Post by sarahb7538 on Apr 26, 2020 15:57:58 GMT
😳😳
First the caravan and now this!! Wow.
They really are both fantastic! You are very talented.
Thank you for the tips re the door bolts and hanging baskets. I am in the middle of a stable renovation and was struggling as didn't want the usual hook type closing, so this is a great idea.
|
|
|
Post by astudyinscarlet on Apr 26, 2020 16:17:30 GMT
😳😳 First the caravan and now this!! Wow. They really are both fantastic! You are very talented. Thank you for the tips re the door bolts and hanging baskets. I am in the middle of a stable renovation and was struggling as didn't want the usual hook type closing, so this is a great idea. Thank you. You can buy tiny dolls house bolts but I got some once and didn't like them much, they were so fiddly and delicate, one snapped before I even got to use it on anything and there was nothing to stop the part that slides across shooting out the back end of the holder part either so it was so easy for part of it to go missing. So now I just make my own.
|
|
|
Post by sarahb7538 on Apr 26, 2020 17:35:59 GMT
😳😳 First the caravan and now this!! Wow. They really are both fantastic! You are very talented. Thank you for the tips re the door bolts and hanging baskets. I am in the middle of a stable renovation and was struggling as didn't want the usual hook type closing, so this is a great idea. Thank you. You can buy tiny dolls house bolts but I got some once and didn't like them much, they were so fiddly and delicate, one snapped before I even got to use it on anything and there was nothing to stop the part that slides across shooting out the back end of the holder part either so it was so easy for part of it to go missing. So now I just make my own. Yes I saw those on ebay and they looked a bit fidley and a bit expensive as I need 6. Yours are much better 😊
|
|
|
Post by astudyinscarlet on May 1, 2020 19:23:59 GMT
Here's a tip if you're looking to make stables or other buildings and want something a little bit more substantial as a base rather than cardboard or foamboard but can't buy expensive room boxes and aren't able to cut up large sheets of wood or MDF yourself, look for flat pack MDF boxes. You can find them online for example on ebay and the bigger ones suitable for Julip size buildings are often sold as memory boxes or christmas eve boxes. They're not going to be super cheap for the bigger ones but they're usually far cheaper than dolls house room boxes. They're usually sold in loads of different sizes so check the dimensions thoroughly before you buy anything to make sure it's tall enough for horses and/or riders. You could always build the sides up though if necessary, if you want to make a pitched roof for example, using something like cardboard and then cover the whole thing in lolly sticks or something else, but using the MDF box as a base would then make the whole thing more square and strong as opposed to just using cardboard for the whole thing. Also they're usually quite thin MDF which is easy to cut with a craft knife for creating doorways/windows or changing the shape and roof angle. Also you can use any offcuts from it for other small projects like planters and things like that. Also I mentioned this in my stable post but craft foam (EVA/funky foam) sheets are good for making roof tiles from, they're so easy to cut to any shape or size you need as well as being ideal for making the top ridge tiles since you can easily just fold them over. Try to get the foam sheets in a colour that is the closest to the colour you want your tiles to be if possible but you can paint them if you've only got other colours. Also offcuts/small pieces of lolly sticks, especially the jumbo lolly sticks, can make good roof tiles too.
|
|
|
Post by astudyinscarlet on May 11, 2020 10:38:32 GMT
A slightly different make. I turned what was a mini chest of drawers (the drawers of which were too shallow to really fit anything in. I think it was from Asda originally though I got it through ebay a while back) that was a bland fake dark wood colour into a mini shelf unit. It fits Julip foals and animals and other tiny models (the one on top is a Breyer Mini Whinnies model). I just lightly sanded it, painted it first with white gesso, then some blue acrylic paint that wasn't really of any use for anything else, then sponged on some brighter blue and metallic turquoise acrylic and I added a tiny bit of glitter nail varnish just along the front edges as well so now it's nice and shiny. (Also I haven't wasted the drawers, I took the handles off those and glued them back to back in pairs and now they're being used as drawer tidies for my superglue and stuff in my bedside drawer unit).
|
|