Dollhouse furniture is also expensive. Make your own!

Even if you already own some dollhouse furniture, it's always fun to make more. Most of the following tutorials require little more than a hot glue gun and some cardboard. Some take it to the next level with wood and tools. Choose your own adventure.

My friend Mel of Sparklerama, has two tutorials. First, this really cool sofa. All of the instructions are clearly described in her flickr. For this one, you start with a cardboard base, add some batting, cover with fabric, then upholster it. Looks easy. I can't wait to try it. She has several dollhouses for different types of dolls so take a peek at her photostream to get some inspiration.

The second is for this cool bed. It's pretty much the same idea but with fewer steps. Mel has an Etsy shop where she sells miniatures that you should check out. I've got my eye on one of those rugs.

Catherine of Hyggelig has been busy making some amazing furniture for her daughter. While there aren't any tutorials (and you'll have to translate the site from German), I love the aesthetic and it looks doable. This dining table and bench are lovely. I like family seating like that. It reminds me of going to my Grandma's when I was little.

I also love this sofa. She explains how she made it very clearly. Click here and here for some other wonderful pieces. And tomorrow we'll have an interview with Catherine so stay tuned.

This gorgeous room is by Joel Henriques of Made by Joel from last week's post. He's using some tools but the simplicity of it makes it much less of challenge. I want that chair in my real life. And I honestly had never really given any thought to foliage in the dollhouse. What a great idea to use a real stick. I'm definitely stealing that idea.

For a little bit of holiday cheer, Ohdeedoh did a feature a couple of weeks ago on dollhouse Christmas trees that you can make.

Finally, I did some old fashioned searching on Google and weeded through the craziness to find this link list on cdhm, Custom Dolls, Houses & Miniatures. While for some of them you need to have a woodshop and a few of Santa's elves, many are simple and use polymer clay. I love the tip on how to add the crumb texture to the cake. It's definitely worth browsing through the tutorials to get some ideas on what you can make yourself.

Play Dollhouse Guide

 DIY dollhouse furniture tutorials
(photo courtesy of Made by Joel)

DIY dollhouse tutorials
(photo courtesy Cookie)

Enchantmints

Educo Hape

Le Toy Van

Plan Toys

Ryan's Room

Buy handmade dollhouse furniture on Etsy

Introductory post with information on reviews and scale here.

Another introductory post with links here.

Bias: It was important for me with these reviews that everything be equal. I didn't actually pay for any of the items that I reviewed. CSN provided the Plan Toys sets in exchange for my reviews, I used Swagbucks to buy some sets from Amazon and some sets were gifts for Z for Christmas. Enchantmints is the only company that provided sets outright. None of this influenced my reviews at all. I still feel that the best quality play dollhouse toys are made by Plan Toys (who I never bothered to contact because of the availability on CSN). The cutest good quality stuff is Enchantmints (whose products I would have bought had they not so generously provided them -- and my mom bought Z the bathroom). All the rest is about the same, give or take. Let me know if you have questions.

Wooden dollhouses are expensive. Make your own!

So I thought I'd put together a little round-up of some of my absolute favorite DIY dollhouses. A huge part of me is regretting not making one this year but it's something we'll definitely do in the future when Z and I can make it together -- probably for bigger dolls. So I guess you could call this, "How not to buy a wooden dollhouse."

Modern dollhouse:

Isn't this stellar? It's from Made by Joel. His blog is one of the ones that I click on immediately in my Reader when I see a new post. He's very talented and comes up with some great projects to do for kids and with kids. You don't need woodworking skills. The people who work at the "home improvement centers" will do a few cuts for you for free. This looks like one 1" X 6" cut into different widths and a few other bits.

Ikea Catalog Dollhouse:

This simple tutorial shows you how to take two pieces of cardboard or stiff posterboard and an Ikea catalog to make an awesome house. It's a great project you can do with your kid. From See the Woods and the Trees with an update here. I think that the Flor catalog would work well too. Great interiors.

Bookcase dollhouse:

I found this one ages ago at ohdeedoh. Unfortunately, the flickr account is no longer active so these are the only pictures we have. It's just a simple shelf with awesome furniture inside. You could easily customize this with scrapbook paper wallpaper and some handmade rugs.

Shelf Dollhouse:

Darlybird just appeared in my life via Grosgrain and was quickly added to my Reader. In a series of posts, she tells us everything she used to make this amazing dollhouse for her kids and includes links to some resources (like where to shop for that awesome re-ment stuff she's got in there). You'll need to read the first post, then click through to the series.

Foamcore Dollhouse:

Amy from Sweet Sweet Life posted a tutorial on how to make a dollhouse (similar to the Ikea catalog one) using foamcore. The tutorial is here, although the original idea came from Cookie Magazine (r.i.p., beloved tome). She made cute little dolls for it using pictures of Charlie and Lola. She has filled it with all kinds of mini goodness including some Calico Critters stuff that I recognize from my research. Amy's new blog is here.

Finally, there's always About.com. They have compiled a pretty good list of links for plans to make a real play dollhouse -- like cutting wood and stuff like that.

Next week I'll do a round-up post of making dollhouse furniture and more reviews. A couple sets have just arrived. For the rest of the dollhouse posts, click here then scroll to the bottom for links to the other posts. I'll get a link thing on the sidebar going sometime soon.

Oh, special thanks to everyone who was cool about letting me use their images. I contacted everyone I could find as these images don't belong to me.

Dollhouse furniture review: Plan Toys

Welcome to another installment of "How to Buy a Wooden Dollhouse." A while back CSN stores asked if I wanted to do a review of some of their products. It didn't seem like too hefty of a task and since they had this awesome dollhouse furniture, I decided to give it a shot. Basically I was given a gift certificate and paid for anything over that amount. For the three sets, shipping was only about $8 or $9, not bad at all.

These sets are all from Plan Toys, a green toy company focusing on making safe, educational products. So not only do they make toys that are safe for kids and more than compliant with all regulations, they also manufacture in clean ways. I have not discussed reviewing products with the company. I'm doing this on behalf of CSN.

Scale: As you can see, these pieces take up quite a bit of space in the Ryan's Room dollhouse. I don't have a problem with that. We chose a small dollhouse on purpose. I will talk more on scale in a later post. The pandas fit in the furniture well but poor Papa had a rough time changing the baby's diaper. The Plan Toys and the Ryan's Room pieces are compatible in size. These pieces are a bit larger than the Enchantmints pieces I reviewed in a previous post.

Quality: Wow. These pieces are really well crafted. Superior. Not a splinter, not a single stroke of paint out of line. And there is a good bit of detail here without being too period specific (too bad those pandas look like they're about to join a cult. I'm going to have to sew them something more contemporary). The crib comes with a little mobile (see just up there on the left), the changing table opens up, the baby's outfit has an adorable hood and is so soft. I love the striped stroller and the vegetables, oh my! The vegetables are stellar. Such detail. You can take them in and out of their little rows and put them in the wheelbarrrow. The shovel has a metal head. I actually was shocked at the quality. While at about $18 a set, they are near the top of the wooden play dollhouse range, it is clear why. You do get what you pay for.

Overall, I'm very impressed by Plan Toys. I have seen their other, non-dollhouse toys and they are of the same quality. These fit well with the theme of our dollhouse and while the Calico Critters are a bit small in comparison, if they were wearing better clothes, you wouldn't even feel they were out of place. I will be making new covers for the bedding though. I am not too into the florals they've got going on.

I'm going to say a few words about CSN stores although I'm not required to. Shopping on the website was really easy. They had lots of different categories and everything fit in them nicely. They also made good use of sidebars on the left and breadcrumbs (some webspeak, yo) at the top. That is so important. They also have a price slider so you can limit to a certain range. Good selection of the eco-friendly stuff that I prefer my kid to play with. Oh, and get this, a friend told me that when she was remodelling her bathroom, if she found something cheaper somewhere else and emailed a link to CSN, they would quote her a cheaper price. Cool. I'm not sure if they are still doing that.

All photos are taken inside the Ryan's Room Carry n Play Dollhouse that we got at our local toy store. My mom also got the Plan Toys gazebo since Z had requested her dollhouse to have an "outside." I think we will have to put that together but all of the stuff above was pre-assembled. If you want to read my other dollhouse reviews, click here then scroll down to the bottom of that post for other two links.

Dollhouse furniture review: Enchantmints mushroom cuteness

So here is round one of furniture reviews for my "How to buy a wooden dollhouse series." After seeing this gorgeous fairy collection at our local library, I did some research and found out the whole thing belonged to a local woman who teaches fairy classes to girls. Super cool. She pointed me in the right direction and I was hooked.

This mushroom line is part of the Fairy Forest collection by Enchantmints. They are a US-based company focusing on imaginative products that are quality made, exceeding both US and European safety standards. So just to put this out there: they provided the sets that I am reviewing but that is not influencing my opinion of either the company or the products. I would have bought this stuff anyway (and have it on good authority that Santa is bringing the bathroom set to Meme's house for Christmas).

Scale: I'll talk more about scale among the other sets (Ryan's Room, Educo/Hape, Le Toy Van, and Plan Toys) later. These mushroom pieces are slightly smaller than the others we have. They are slightly larger than the Calico Critters (products I won't be reviewing unless my SIL gets them for her kid for Christmas). But I feel that these work GREAT with our pandas, as you can see in the pictures.

Quality: The quality of these pieces is very good. The painted pieces are especially nice. They are very cleanly made without a mess. The only thing I had a slight issue with the was leaf "rug" that came with the mushroom table and stools. The wood was cut a little roughly around the edges. I quickly took a nail file to it and now it's fine. I don't think there would have been any splinters but I just wanted to be sure. After some play, these edges will probably smooth out. For some reason, lots of dollhouse furniture dining sets come with stools. It's really hard to get dolls to sit on stools. In fact, I find sitting on stools to be a bit challenging.

Overall, I love these pieces. I think they are also a good value. The kitchen and bedroom set comes with five pieces for $15. The little drawers open and close -- the fridge door opens and closes easily; there is a little metal handle on the stove. The bed will fit perfectly in the children's room. The living room set is also very well crafted. No problems with rough edges on the stained (green leafy) pieces. I also think these would work well as outdoor furniture. My neighbors have a fireplace outside with chairs in front of it -- awesome for Fall evenings. Why shouldn't the pandas enjoy such bliss?

All photos are taken inside the Ryan's Room Carry n Play Dollhouse that we got at our local toy store. The furniture fits very nicely inside. And aren't these gnomes amazing?  For my other dollhouse posts, click here and here.

The Crystal top

 As soon as my Wonderland fabric arrived in the mail, I knew exactly what I wanted to use it for. I love how effortlessly it goes with the Lizzy House ducks.

I used this amazing vintage pattern that my Mother-in-Law let me borrow. She made this pattern for my Sister-in-Law's first day of school way back when. Although the pattern is a 3, as you can see, it's huge. This Winter we'll layer with some long sleeves underneath -- or maybe a thermal.

And that's Crystal there in the middle on her first day of school! Weren't the 1970s amazing? (Happy 40th!!!). That is not my husband beside her. That is one of the neighbors. He would have been just out of diapers at the time.

I used a bright blue zipper in the back, royal blue bias tape for the hem, and the same color ric rack for the trim across the top. Also, I used my sewing machine's reinforced straight stitch to topstitch around the collar in the blue to give it a little kick. The sleeves on this thing are like crazy butterflies. I thought it would settle down a bit after a washed it but no luck. The pattern was actually super easy to use and I didn't have any problems with it at all. Very quick.  More pics on flickr.

The hoop

So I've finished the hoop and sent it off to its new owner. I took this photo before I did some more stitching to the dots. I kept it simple but wanted to add a little bit of whimsy to it.

I'll post a final shot after it's arrived to its new home.