DIY Dolls House

This has been by far one of my favourite craft projects so far!

I have decided to make a dolls house for the girls as a joint Christmas present. Its not totally DIY as I did buy the basic shell. I bought this really large basic Dolls House from ToysRus. It's super cheap at £50 for a wooden house with accessories and figures. But it's plain and boring...hence the price.

Cute toilet before make over

So if you fancy giving it a go, this is how I did the girls one on a super tight budget.

Firstly I painted the house parts before assembling it. Its much easier to paint before screwing it together. I used a some left over matt paint for the exterior walls and added white gloss to the raised areas for definition. I painted the door in a slightly darker blue to the walls just so it stood out.

Secondly I managed to decorate the entire interior walls and floors for free...how?
I searched the internet for a few hours and ordered every free sample of wall papers I could. Most major shops do free samples with free shipping, next, john lewis, homebase ect, but lots of high end designers do them too. The living room wall paper would be over £100 per roll to buy, but I got a large A4 sample for free. You also get the free sample rolls in most DIY shops, I just visited one and took some free strips. I used wood effect wall paper to create wooden flooring in the dolls house too.

I had to wait a couple of weeks for them all to arrive but once they did I got cracking.

Lastly the finishing touches. I used a home catalogue and cut out pictures of photos in frames to sick on the walls, fire place photos, mirrors, lights, plants. Once they were all stuck on they added character to the rooms.

So here are the finished rooms.

This is the master bedroom. This is wall paper glued to the walls and floor. Note the added picture on the wall of a rose from a catalogue of home décor.
I also covered the bed with a scrap of material and made a new bedding set.



The kids bedroom .I used wall paper on the walls and floors again here. I also cut out some kids cartoon pictures from a kids magazine to show it as a kids room. I added coloured paper to the stairs to add extra colour.

This is the living room with the super expensive wall paper. I've use the wood effect paper in here to look a bit like wooden flooring also.

You can see some of the added details here with the photos hanging on the wall, the fireplace and the clock. These were all taken out of a home style magazine.

Next my favourite room. The toilet. But mostly because I managed to find this awesome wall paper. I think this was from a DIY shop, which I took from the free sample roll.







This is the kitchen, again this was an expensive wall paper which I love. I pained the kitchen appliances and put some silver wall paper onto the pretend fridge. I also added some pictures of kitchen house decor stuff like the chalk boards on the left and house rules on the right.

Lastly here's mum in the dinning room, with a drink. I tried to make this as realistic as possible after all. I used fabric on the floor here to create a carpet feel and another square of carpet for a rug


Overall this is now a fun, colourful and hopefully something they will have fun with and play with for a long time. Plus if /when anything gets inevitably damaged, it doesn't matter..we can just re decorate.

Cress Heads

This is a great penny pinching home craft for the little ones.

The kids enjoy getting messy making them, lots of stickers decorating them, then watching them grow. The best bit is they grow super quick for those impatient kiddies who tend to loose interest if they can't almost see something growing before their very eyes. These only take a week or so to mature so are perfect.

So here is how:

1. Cut up an old pair of tights around the ankles.
2. Pour a few cress seeds into the toe part of the foot.
3. Top with soil and tie up end. (for the daddy pour a few extra seeds in around the top of your soil to create a beard before you tie up)
4. Turn upside down onto the tied up end.
5. Decorate with stickers. We did a mummy, daddy and Scarlett. 
6. Place into little dishes to collect water.
7. Water thoroughly at first, then just pour water into the dishes when they start to feel dry.
8. Watch them grow.
9. When shoots appear to be trying to break through the tights, cut a small hole to let them through
10. Add to salads and sandwiches when you want to give them a hair cut.

Day 1

Day 3

You can see the shoots coming through. 

Day 7

Sensory Board

This is a work-in-progress project here as I'm planning on giving this to the girls for Christmas.

I wanted to create a sensory board which would grow with the kids. So currently we have lots of fiddly bits on it, but later on I'll use it as a notice board and jewellery rack in their room.

I took a trip to a DIY and pound shop. I've spend about £20 altogether, so this is a super cheap craft with a lot of impact.

I bought the following.
1. MDF board. This was a cheap off cut from the bargain bin.
2. Along the top we have a metal rule which also acts as a magnet strip for the alphabet letters and light.
3. In the middle we have a mirror, door knobs, chalk board, photo frames, alphabet stickers, felt picture board and pink pencil case.

Firstly I arranged the bits on the board, finding out the best placement for everything.

Once I liked the positioning I raided the craft cupboards, stuck down the pieces and this is what we have. the circular photo frames are not finished, but they are hanging so you can lift them up and see underneath. I'm going to fill these with different textures and pictures.

Fairies in the Garden

Spring has sprung and the tulips are in bloom so we decided to keep the flower fairies happy by creating a little home for them. The idea of a little home quickly turned in to a princess style tower under Scarlett's direction. So here we have it: Fairy Towers. 

Fairy Towers

To make the fairy home and garden we collected a pot tray to contain the whole thing, a plastic tube for the tower (this was an old tennis ball tube), pink fish tank pebbles, a sheet of craft foam, a handful of coloured lollypop sticks from the craft supplies, some sparkly bits to decorate, 2 plastic party cups and a marker pen. 

We then set about the garden to get some plants for the fairies. I took some rockery plants, a small thyme plant and ivy. I planted the ivy into the two party cups, cutting a hole in the bottom for water to drain. 

I then cut the end off the tube to become the roof.

Ready to add to the tower

I also made a window for the second plant to grow out of. I dropped the cups into place pulling the ivy out of the windows. I then wrapped the tube in the foam sheet, in hindsight I would have drawn the bricks onto the foam BEFORE sticking it to the tube, not after, it was annoying!

Please ignore the tape, this was put on whilst waiting for the glue to dry so we could carry on making the tower, who knew 3 year old's were so impatient! 

After adding a door outline with a different colour felt we added the tube to a plant try filled with soil. 

We built up the soil around the base of the tower to add support and depth to the small garden. We planted the thyme next to the tower to look like a small tree and planted the other plants around the mini garden. I made a picket fence with the coloured lollipop sticks and used the pink pebbles to create a path. We made a swing (to match Scarlett's one, on her request) out of lollipop sticks. Scarlett decorated the roof with sequins and glitter glue whilst I added on details with the marker pen. We made a right mess but we had fun. 

Almost completed.

We then very carefully carried the fairy house into the rockery corner of the garden ready to find a new inhabitant. It's nicely sheltered there so hopefully wont be too destroyed by the elements. I just need to add a bit of moss around the plants to bring it to life. 

A quiet little nook. 

After picking the rest of the pink pebbles out of the lawn we scattered them along the fairy path to lead to the house, nicely tucked away waiting to be discovered by fairies and children alike. 

Fancy Dress Clothes Rack..from a CD storage unit?

Scarlett loves her imaginary play which means her fancy dress collection is quite vast, taking over half of her wardrobe and numerous toy boxes. So as part of my on going plans to put both girls in the same bedroom and create a dressing room in the spare room I decided to have a go at making a dressing up clothes rack with built in bits and bobs storage.

The end result. 

I found an old CD shelving unit which we bought from Ikea about 8 years ago and set to work with a jig saw and screw driver to try and create something a bit more useful and pretty.

 The selves before. 

After taking apart one half of the selves I used the two longest lengths as my side pieces to the rack. I cut out a curved top to remove any sharp edges.

Tip: I cut both sides at the same time so both end pieces matched even if I went a bit wobbly with the jig saw.

The unit sides

I took apart the second half of the shelves and cut down two lengths to make the base sides and the backing card to the shelves became the bottom of the storage tray. I used these cut down pieces as a template to cut an old gardening hoe handle which is now the hanging pole. 

I screwed together the side pieces to the base sides.

I then screwed in the hanging pole and lastly tacked the backing card to the underside of the base to create the storage tray.

Lastly using over some left over paint from decorating the hallway and our bedroom I painted the unit. I kept the hanging rail free from paint as it would wear off after time anyway.

I did the last coat of paint this morning and it was finished. I've just ordered some wooden hangers which should make it look a bit more uniform and ordered.

Scarlett loves it as she can reach all her favourite dresses and change outfits as many times as she likes.

Mirror Revamp - Once Upon A Dream

After a good Friday spent repainting my hallway, stairway and landing I looked at my landing mirror this afternoon and realised it did not go with any of the new décor. So in true thrift style I spent about half an hour collecting bits of inspiration from around the house and decided to revamp the old mirror into something new.

This literally only took me a couple of hours using some left over wall paint, buttons, broken bits of jewellery and good old super glue.

I forgot to take a before shot but this gives you an idea on how it looked before.

The before shot (actually just the unpainted back)

Firstly I painted the frame in some left over wall paint. Then whilst that dried I got out my button box and old jewellery and started mapping out ideas.

Then after watching The Voice finals I put super glue to button and started sticking it all down

Tip: I used puppy training pads to protect the flooring. 

These are water proof and absorb any spillages.

I also found this pendant which I have attached to the bottom of the frame. I'm thinking I might use the holes from the chain to hang a little sign, if I find something that catches my eye. 

Lastly I spotted this "Once upon a dream" logo on the back of a birthday card I'd gotten from Anya. I thought it looked cute so I cut it out and stuck it in the top corner. 

And there we go it's done. The best bit is I remember all the bits of jewellery I used, and who gave them to me and when, All those bits that had too much sentiment to throw away, but now I get to see them all again and enjoy them in this new space. 

Looking much brighter than the old black frame. 

Love my new mirror frame...now I'm looking at the lamp shade and thinking how dull that looks. I might need to stock up on more super glue!