My Mind full of Miniatures

By adding the extension on top of my dollhouse-within-a-dollhouse, quite a bit of space became available. How would I fill it? This question became easier to answer by reframing it as a different question: what did I really want to try to create on this scale?  Definitely a fireplace! And curtains—would I be able to make those? Only two of the walls offered enough free space. And so the parlour remained on the ground floor, while the first floor became a music/drawing room. The teeny-tiny fireplace (2,9 cm high in total!) had to go in the parlour. I cut the various parts from different thicknesses of cardboard. I painted the mantelpiece dark green, with ‘tiles’ featuring a floral motif on either side. The hearth got a black-and-white marble effect, and I covered the chimney breast with the same wallpaper as the walls. Several layers of semi-transparent paper glued together form a fire. I cut a thin strip of metal to size and folded it into a fender. After adding a little gold ...

Do you know that feeling when you're completely certain about an idea and can't wait to get started? That's exactly how I felt once I'd decided that a large painting was needed above the desk. The internet provided a wealth of inspiration. Birds were popular Victorian pets, especially among ladies and young girls. Apparently, they also loved having their portraits painted with their feathered companions. I chose to use the oil painting below as my starting point. It was painted by Edouard Marie Guillaume Dubufe in 1871 and is titled A Treat for Her Pet . A horizontally oriented painting works much better above the desk, so I cropped the original image (although it was a shame to lose that beautiful dress and velvet cloak!) . I printed it in very pale tones and painted over it with acrylics. I could have drawn the whole thing myself, but working this way removes a bit of the risk of failure—which, admittedly, is something I always worry about. Don't you think...

As I mentioned in my previous post, letting go of the parrot wallpaper wasn't easy. I really loved those parrots! So I started wondering whether there might be a way to bring them back into the room after all. Perhaps still as part of the wall décor? I found illustrations from  A Monograph of the Lories , published in London in 1896. In the original artwork, the parrots are predominantly reddish, but to make them fit the colour scheme of my morning room, I decided to redraw them in shades of deep pink, purple, and blue. The drawings were done using coloured pencils. Once they were finished, I sealed them with a fixative spray. I then cut sheets of PVC to size and framed them. The plan is to hang the two framed drawings on either side of the baby dollhouse. (I first intended to hang them side by side above the desk. But I decided a large painting is a more suitable choice for that spot.)

During the months I spent waiting for the cabinet that would include my dollhouse to be installed, I chose wallpaper for each room. It needed to reflect the Victorians' love of rich colours and elaborate patterns. On top of that, I wanted the colours to be well balanced throughout the house and to create a harmonious whole. Unlike a real house, after all, every room in a dollhouse can be seen at the same time. I browsed through hundreds of wallpaper designs online, made selections, reached decisions — and changed my mind at least ten times before I was finally satisfied. I then had all the wallpaper for every room printed on heavyweight paper at a local print shop. All that remained, I thought, was to cut it to size and add the wainscoting. My, oh my... how wrong I was! This was going to be the wallpaper for the morning room, with a ‘wainscoting’ made from a leftover piece of the dark green wallpaper we used in our real bedroom. But as soon as I tested it in the morning roo...