Simple Livin: August 2013

DIY Barbie House!

This is the dollhouse I made for my daughter. It had to be slim to fit in her room.

I used all 1x10 shelving board, and luan for backing it

I simply cut out wood pieces like a shelf, and angled the top like a roof.

I didnt take many pics of this, by the time I thought to take the first pic, i had all pieces together and the roof painted black already lol.

Here it is with the backing cut and nailed on

I painted it flat white first for primer, then painted each room

for flooring, I found wood look contact paper at the dollar store, just cut to size and stick down!!

So pretty!!! She was thrilled!

and here is a quick glimpse into each room (except top, its just storage for now)

The bedroom. I made the bead, its in my previous post. The picture is a small craft frame with a picture of barbie i printed.

Bathroom

Living room

Ariel watching spongebob lol

the kitchen (this was a repaint to match the table she had)

here is the before pic

Rapunzel fixing her man some tea, lol

Barbie!

My little girl is really into Barbie right now. She is 7 and has had barbies for years but is just now really into playing with them. She wanted a doll house (as any girl would) and I was unable to find an affordable one which would fit in her tiny room where it needed to be, so I made one.

The doll house I made was perfect for her, but now we needed furniture. After seeing the prices of furniture sets in toy stores I knew I had to use my craftiness on it! I made some things from scratch, and re-purposed some existing items. Below is what ive been working on. . . hope it helps you if you too are looking for cheap doll furniture! :)

Bedroom:

Dresser

Note: (i realize these pics are sideways and am not tech savy enough to fix sorry)

We had a dresser in a not so hip pink, so we spray painted it black.

i put tape around the knobs so they wouldn't get painted, and sprayed away!

For the mirror, I found a tiny mirror out of an old purse and used painted popsicle sticks as a frame. I hot glued the mirror to a square of cardboard (old cereal box lol) and then hot glued the frame around it. (I cut the angles on the sticks with good scissors)

Here is the newly painted dresser and mirror!

Now for a bed!

I saw the idea for this bed online on another blog. I cannot find it anymore but when I do I will post the link for proper credits. They did awesome and I copy-catted it :)

I used an old shoe box, 4 pencils, printed duck tape, a little fabric, and hot glue

first, wrap the pencils in tape, these are the bed posts

I had these nifty shaped wood pieces, but you could cut the shape from cardboard.

they will be headboard and footboard. Wrap them in the tape also.

At this point i trimmed the bottom of the shoe box to be thin enough as a mattress.

use hot glue to attatch fabric around the shoe box top. It was a bit hard and flat looking so i stuck some fluff in there ;)

wrap duck tape around the top portion of the bottom of the box

top should still slide over bottom

glue headboard, footboard and posts in place

finish by wrapping the ducktape around the entirety at the bottom

Viola! A beautiful barbie bed!!

The Living Room!

Barbie needed a sectional, and the box and ducktape worked so well on the bed, that I decided to re-do that here.

printed duck tape, spaghetti boxes, fabric, cardboard and hot glue used.

i cut the boxes to the size needed

I stuffed them with old plastic bags so they wouldnt crush and hot glued them together.

This is the couch base.

Next I completely and smoothly glued fabric to a piece of cardboard to be the back of the couch.

Next, I covered the top of the couch with ducktape and glued the backing on

Then like the bed, I wrapped the tape around the entire bottom (including hte back side)

This is what the bottom looked like, I chose not to finish covering it. lazy me

for cushion, i cut cardboard to fit right ontop the couch, and covered it with fabric. I had glued some cotton balls on the top of it for fluff. (the bottom is shown here)