DIY wood flooring

Hi there

Today I'll show you how you can easily make a nice wooden floor for your dollhouse rooms without cutting every single piece or buying one that isn't gonna fit into your room anyway

I found bamboo placemats in one of the drawers of my kitchen some time ago. Since we never used them anyway, I decided to make something else with them

These placemats are made of wooden bamboo pieces, held together with some sort of thread, which needs to come off first. The entire thing will fall apart and you'll have your pieces ready to make your flooring, yeah 👍👌👋

This picture shows the before and after effect. On top is the floor for my dollhouse, where I only used the wider parts and below is before cutting of the thread.

I always use double sided tape for this kind of project. This way I avoid having glue all over my fingers and all over the floor for my dollhouse too. Just put the double sided tape on a piece of cardboard (not too thick though, about 1 mm is enough) and start gluying the wood pieces on top.

Then stain or color .... your choice

This is what the floor looked before I stained it. I wanted to have light tone here. So 2 coats of stain are more than enough

An this is what the floor looks once put inside the shop (using double sided tape again, makes it easier of one day you'll decide to change it)

Used the same bamboo place mats here ..... for the entrance of the shop

finished it with white paint.

I hope these little tips will help you next time you want to make your own wooden floors for your miniature projects

Enjoy and stay tuned, there's more to come

See ya ...

👀👀👀

DIY Postcard and/or Magazine Rack

Hi everybody

I'ts time for a new DIY post here on my blog. As you all well know by now, I'm a DIY'er, well let's say I have become one over the years. Not because I couldn't find what I was looking for, no no no, everything is right out there, you just have to buy it and put it in your dollhouse, but that's no fun, isn't it ??

😎😎👯👯😃😃

Today, we're going to talk a little bit about postcard and/or magazine racks that you can easily make with a few things I'm sure you have in your workplace somewhere.

Let's start with a few pictures of the one's I made for some of my miniature projects

This was my very first try. I needed one for my scrapbook shop. 

Needless to say I made all the magazines too

Feeling proud 😊😊

Here's another magazine rack I made for my beach shop, which is in sunny Florida ... you might have guessed that already, lol.

The postcard rack was also made for my beach shop ..... I'll post a few pictures on the making process at the end of this post, so please don't click away now  ......... 💕💕💕

With the pencil in the pictures, you can see the size of the racks. Both are flat, because I didn't have much space in my little shop and they had to be glued onto the wall.

This is what you'll need for this projects. A page of printed postcards in the correct size of course, Tacky Glue, acrylic color of your choice, a sheet of balsa wood (2 mm thick is quite ok here), M-shaped corner moulding, scissors, ruler, pencil, cutter and a pair of fine tweezers

I first cut out a few postcards, since they all are the same size. 

It's the easiest way to fit them into your rack

Once you've chosen the size of your rack, cut out the back from the piece of balsa wood and cut the L-shaped angled moulding to the same width

NO GLUYING ..... NOT JUST YET

Put the moulding in place and add a postcard to each one, in order to see if they fit and also to have the same space between all of them

This is what I use to cut moulding, trims, railing, cornice, etc. ... the ultimate easy cutter.

Not cheap, but very very helpful

Now you can glue the mouldings on .... and sand everything

You can either use these flat wood sticks or balsa wood to cut out the sides of your rack

Glue in place and sand

It now should look something like this

Paint and wait until dry, then use your tweezers to add the postcards 

better glue them on, otherwise they will keep falling around your shop, believe me, I KNOW 

..... and decorate as you like

I found this punch in a hobby store once .... the little palm trees came in handy since this is a beach shop, haha. I have another one with tiny little dolphins, also very cute for any project that has to do with the beach

I hope you'll enjoy making one of these racks ..... 

feel free to get in touch should you have any questions

email me at : dmzminiatures@gmail.com

Stay tuned ....

See ya 

💃💃💃

DIY Flower boxes

Hi there

I'm back today with a few tips on how to make your own flower boxes and make them look old, weathered. You can of course make yours and just paint them to look brandnew, that's entirely up to you.

It's an easy project, very suitable for beginners too, so don't be afraid, just need some wood, glue, stain and acrylic colors and an old nailfile for sanding.

These wood strips are widely available at most dollhouse and/or hobby and craft shops. These here are about 40 cm long, 1 cm wide and 1-2 mm thick.

Here's what they look after 2 coats of wood stain .... there are different shades, so you can make your choice. It doesn't really matter that much, since it will be covered with paint and only look through a little bit after sanding.

And here are the boxes once assembled. One of the reasons I like to make my own is because you never get the right size to really fit your windows when you by them 😒😒

Mine are for the windows of the "Dorfpuppenhaus", so I made them the size I needed.

These have already a first coat of acrylic colorK

Here are different ways to make them look old and weathered. Once your acrylic color is dry (which is a very fast process usually), take an old nailfile and start sanding lightly, don't push too hard on the file.

If you're not happy with the result, you can add another coat of vernish and/or color and sand some more

Maybe some of you might think that these simply look dirty, lol .... but as I said, it's entirely up to you how they'll end up

These are the colors and stain I used for this project.

I discovered the use of "Distress Ink Pads" while watching a youtube video and they really come in handy for projects like these. AND DON'T FORGET TO WEAR GLOVES !!!! Otherwise your fingernails will look kinda dirty for a few days, at least, because wood stain is very very sticky.

If you don't want your boxes to look too old and dark, just stain, put on a coat of acrylic color and sand very lightly. Then use these tiny ink pads to just go over the edges. I bought these 4 colors and just fiddled around until I was happy with the result.

Here are 2 boxes almost finished, filled with some roses ..... I'll just need to add some glue (UHU is really great here) to get your flowers not to fall out of the box .... haha and finish it with some green moss and I'll be done. They're ready to embellish the windows of my dollhouse.

*****************

I'm also trying to make my own terracotta pots ..... I will be posting the results as soon as they look ..... decent enough to be published 😇😇😇 so stay tuned

See ya ......

DIY Wine and Champagne Bottles

To begin with, I would like to say that I found the idea on how to make the bottles here :

http://montoutpetitmonde.kazeo.com/realisation-de-bouteilles-miniatures-en-resine-a121754338

For those of you who speak french, it will be easier of course, but even if you don't, the picture are very explicite, so I think you'll get it.

I've tried to find a way on how to make my own wine bottles for a very long time and I tried out many different techniques, but none of them really got me the results I wanted.

I must say, when I tried this technique here, I only made 1 bottle at a time and they ended up in the trash. ALL OF THEM !!! But then, after a few more tries, the bottles slowly started to look better and even if the one's I'm about to show you here are not perfect yet, I thought they were at least worth sharing.

I made a few baskets for my bottles and here, with the pencil next to them, 

you can see how small they are

These are a few of the bottles I made, different models (mostly from bottles I bought in Miniature Shops, but some also made with polymer clay ... to have a "model" to work with.

They're sooooo tiny .... 😊😊

And look what happens when you get distracted .... by the cat !!!!

The label is upside down, hahaha

😂😂😂