Bear with me, both the second grade teacher and little girl in me are about to come out simultaneously in a an explosion of handcrafted cuteness otherwise known as my third no-spend Christmas gift: the dollhouse diorama.
I am especially proud of this one because I stuck with it and finished it (Ok, I’m not totally finished, I still have some embellishment left to do) even though it took a looooong time by my standards, 3+ hours (Normally I have a 1 hour patience threshold.) and also because after I finished it I searched my friend the internet to see if anyone else had made one the same way. I couldn’t find one. Maybe it’s out there, but since I couldn’t find it I’m going to bask in the moment and assume this is an original idea.
My inspiration was this adorable puffy dollhouse over at Little Page Turners.
My mission was to take this shoe box and transform it into a puffy dollhouse.
I traced each side twice. Once onto the purple fabric and once onto the white fabric. (and by fabric I mean two old spit up rags that had been thoroughly washed)
Then I cut out all of the pieces and sewed the matching ones, right sides together, together on three sides. Turn them back right-side-out and you have basically made a slip cover for each piece.
Then, with my little helper (big brother was napping), I also traced each piece onto quilt batting. (Which I bought 4 years ago with the bright idea that I was going to make a friend a quilt as a wedding gift. Said “quilt”-all two rows of it- is still in my craft basket. They got a nice store-bought embroidered blanket from Things Remembered instead.)
Ok, here comes the hard part….Use embroidery thread to hand-stitch the outside edges and put the box back together. I am NOT skilled with embroidery thread. (In fact the only reason I even have embroidery thread is because I went through a “I think I’ll learn how to cross-stitch” phase, but then I realized it was hard and I quit.) This part took the longest. It’s not perfect by any means, but I wanted the overall look to be whimsical and homemade, so I’m ok with that.
Each edge should look like this:
Once the box was padded and back together I was really sick of hand-stitching and fighting with embroidery thread-that stuff is so annoying! So I decided to make the people who would live in my dollhouse. I was so excited when I remembered I had these doll pins! I bought them at the dollar store by accident a few years ago. I thought I was buying clothes pins to use in my classroom. I couldn’t use these for what I had intended, so they have been sitting with my craft stuff for at least three years.
I just modge-podged on some fabric scraps for clothes, yarn for the girls’ hair, and used a black sharpie for the faces.
It’s done! Well, it could theoretically be done, but I still have some stuff I want to add. I just hand-stitched fabric scraps to the inside to look like windows and furniture. I wasn’t even that careful about it because I wanted it to look like it came straight out of a child’s imagination.
Here’s a picture with the door open:
And one with it shut:
There you go. Free puffy dollhouse with dolls, courtesy of mommy.
UPDATE:
Ok, that’s better. I wasn’t satisfied with this one yet. It was looking a little too “I made this out of a shoe box” for my taste. I needed it to live up to the inspiration piece. So I took the lid frm the shoebox, gave it the same treatment with fabric and batting, and added a hinged front, just like the one from Little Page turners. I personalized the front with a monogram of my daughter’s initials. It closes around a fabric-covered button on the top.
Closed:
I could totally see making one of these into a mailbox. Maybe that will be my next project for Nicholas.
And open:
I also like that this gives more surface area to play with the dolls.
I feel better now.
And I didn’t need to spend $49 on this Pottery Barn puffy dollhouse
Or the $89 Amazon.com wanted for this one from Disney
I might still make some puffy furniture to go with mine. Either way, I saved at least $49, bringing my 3 day total to $127 in savings.
your kids are so lucky to have a mom so creative! Thanks for linking up to We can Do It Cheaper!
Love the dolls! And the idea of using spray adhesive is genius. Thanks for the shout-out!
way to go mama… and to save money too! SUPER DARLING, LOVE IT! thNx FOr LinKIng Up tOo! Jenn
love it! visiting from the iron crafter!!