BOGO

As in, buy one, get one free.

I have recently cleaned up my Etsy shop: taken inventory, did some organizing, edited old listings, etc. So here you have it. I rarely have a sale and I generally feel uncomfortable promoting anything I make or do but I have a lot of ideas and I want to make room for them so here it is.

I'm not going to advertise this on Etsy, just here and on flickr. And maybe once or twice on Facebook.

So just pick out what you want and put it in your cart and checkout. There will be a box that says, "Message to Seller" or something like that. Tell me how much you love me and I will send you a paypal invoice for the right amount. Shipping will max out at $5. Everything goes, nothing is excluded. If something you want has just sold and it didn't say, "LAST ONE," shoot me an email and I'll see if I have more.

Feel free to send this on to your friends. Thanks.

Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress . the finale

I finished the Oliver + S Jump Rope Dress a while ago and wanted to wait to show pics of Z in the dress. With Winter, that's just not going to happen anytime soon. One brighter day, I shot this picture of the dress in its current location. It's been hanging there like a painting and will continue to do so until Spring.

If you want to know more, follow the links from this post.

Extending the tree skirt pattern

I took a photo of my tree skirt pattern for different sizes of trees. Christmas fabric is dirt cheap right now so you may want to make a pattern that will fit your tree and head out and pick some up to hoard away for your 2011 projects. The pattern I linked to in the previous post was made from the brown craft paper pattern that I placed on top of the extended version for the photo.

My mom has a very tall tree with a large branch span at the bottom. The bigger pattern is for her. It's about 2.5 feet from the center to the edge. As you can see, the hole at the center is much larger than the one for my little tree.

I recycled used wrapping paper to make the larger pattern. I wrote instructions on it for my SIL who plans to make one for her tree next year. So if you have a big tree, haul some of your wrapping paper out of the recycle bin and flatten it out. Tape my little pattern down and extend the straight lines with a ruler. Use that same ruler to mark your bottom curve.

A little wrapping up (or unwrapping)

Christmas was awesome. It's hard to say more. We had a really wonderful holiday with family. Z got so much loot she doesn't know what to do. Her favorite present, by far, has to be this 5-layer girl puzzle by Beleduc. She has worked it a million times. Each layer has seven pieces so there's more to it than you can see in the product photo. It's very cool. We are learning the names of some muscles and bones and organs (I need to brush up on my terms). The wood is good quality and the pieces are just right for her hands. (Thanks again Auntie Crystal!).

And no, a hurricane did not touch down. This is just the aftermath of the wild child. See the chef apparel on the pandas? I got that for Z and her daddy from an eBay seller. Love. The house is getting a lot of play. It's a bit jumbled but once we move it up to her room, there will be more space to spread things out. You can't tell from this angle but we took the wood that our changing table was and cut two inches off one end. I rewrapped it with some thick cotton fabric to be like grass and we attached it to a shelf/table thing we found in the trash in Brooklyn. (Yeah, we go through people's trash when we travel -- that's how we roll). I'll post some more photos when it's in its new place. I just thought you would appreciate a photo of a messy house and I'll never show you what my real house looks like.

Speaking of a mess... this blog has been a mess. It's been all disorganized lately because the dollhouse reviews took on a life of their own and my job was crazier than usual. I've got some great stuff in the works and things will be more orderly from now on. I've got a week of play food ahead and also a bunch of crafty book reviews. If you'd like to do a guest post on either topic, please comment on this post. I have some awesome bloggers lined up already and I'm very excited about that.

Merry Christmas!

I have finished my first mini project: this tiny little tree that is just like ours! The base is a piece of a branch from our wood pile. We drilled a hole in it and glued a dowel rod in place. Very easy. I took silver pipe cleaners from the dollar store and twisted them around the dowel rod piece by piece. I used pliers to cut the wire to shape it. The garland is Martha Stewart trim from Kmart a few years ago. Next year, we'll make some ornaments.

Elf

 

If you remember from this post, I started planning Z's elf apparel in October.  I found the vintage dress and shirt at a thrift store this summer. The shirt has little candy cane piping around the Peter Pan collar. I am shocked that both actually fit. I couldn't find red elf-enough shoes so I cut out holly leaf shapes from felt and hot glued them on and added a couple of red plastic beads. 

Clearly, the best part is the hat. I got it from this seller who was awesome. She made it for me in a green velvet. The red dress had originally come with navy blue grosgrain ribbon around the neck so I picked it off with my trusty seam ripper and added a ruffle in its place with some fabric Kirsten was super nice to include in the package just for this purpose.

Last week we went to New York City for the first time in a holiday season. Santaland at Macy's was not bad -- we even got to see a fight between natives while standing in line. The photos are really terrible, I know. I'll get some more on Christmas Eve.

Play Dollhouse . Scale

Or should I type, "Scale"? Because play dollhouse furniture is not remotely to scale. I've mentioned scale before but I wanted to do a full post on it with pics so you can see how the play sets work in relation to each other.  Here's the low down: Plan Toys, Ryan's Room, Educo/Hape, and Le Toy Van all pretty much have the same scale. It's just about 1:12 or 1/12. That means that for every foot in real life, you have an inch in the mini. As you can see in the photo above, the awesome mushroom bed (by Enchantmints) is smaller. Not much, but enough. In the play dollhouse, it's not going to make much difference. I'm sure my 2 year old is not going to mind.  Pictured above is the double bed from Educo/Hape with the Plan Toys bunk bed and the Enchantmints bed.

Sylvanian Families or Calico Critters run smaller. I've read both 1:16 and 1:18. Some of my favorite dollhouse companies like Lundby use the smaller scale. That means that 1:12 scale items are going to look a little large in the space. But I have seen photos on flickr and I find it hard to tell the difference. Think about it: the couch I'm sitting on right now looks big in my tiny house but in my friend's McMansion, it would look small. Above on the left is the stove from Ryan's Room (came with the house), on the right, the Le Toy Van Sugarplum kitchen stove, and in front, the stove from Enchantmints.

The thing with play furniture is that it doesn't have the fine detail of regular or collectible dollhouse miniatures. Also, as you can see in the photos, even within some of the sets, there is a big size difference.  Pictured above is the Enchantmints bed -- about the same width as the Plan Toys crib. And that crib is not much smaller than the bunk beds. In real life, the crib would not be that big. That's the Plan Toys bunk bed. Play dollhouse furniture is made with thicker pieces of wood than traditional miniatures so that little fingers will have a harder time destroying it.

The white sofa is Ryan's Room (came with the house). Leaf settee from Enchantmints. The Enchantmints line works really well with the Calico Critters (known internationally as Sylvanian Families).

And three sets of barstools! I can't remember if the orange is Ryan's Room or Le Toy Van. The white is the other one. The mushroom set is obviously Enchantmints.

And a little more information on other brands: Barbie and Blythe dolls (not the petites) are 1:6 scale. So there will be some stuff for them that you can use in a play dollhouse that will work fine because of the chunkiness of the wooden toys. I found some dishes in a box from when I was a kid that I'll be adding to the loot so she'll have some accessories. 

For the rest of the play dollhouse posts, click here. They are all in one place.