Today, I will tell you a little more about what is inside my handmade dollhouse and closeup pictures. It is true that each dollhouse has a story to tell.

The Living Room

This room is a humble American home, with a humble braided rug. A rocking chair faces a stone fireplace.

I used a brass pillbox that I inherited from my Oma (grandma) to make a sewing box. Inside the sewing box I made two pins into sewing needles, and rolled small balls of “yarn” out of embroidery thread, for Oma to knit with.

The Kitchen

The kitchen has a cast iron, wood-burning stove. Actually, it is made of wood but painted with oil paint to look like cast iron.  I made the food, including this berry pie, bananas, oranges and apples out of clay, dried and then painted.  The broom is made with real straw attached to a twig.

The Yellow Bedroom

The yellow bedroom is for the parents. A miniature map of the world hangs on the wall. I put original, miniature pen and ink drawings in the chest of drawers of “the children”. Sometimes the cradle is in this room, and sometimes it is in the attic.

The Pink Bedroom

The pink bedroom is for a young girl. She is a quiet, red-headed girl who likes to read books and daydream. Inside the treasure chest, the books were made by sewing paper inside of tiny cardboard covers, and printed in the smallest type I could write.

The Attic Bedroom

This room is reached through a ladder and here lives a smaller child, about age 6. I carved a crude looking rocking house out of balsa wood. I made the saddle from cut leather, and the mane and tail from embroidery thread.  The balsa wood was too soft to carve well, so if you carve a rocking horse, try a denser wood than balsa wood!

The Blue Bathroom

The bathroom is decorated in blue and white wallpaper and tiles, to look like Delft Blau tiles from Holland. The toilet lid was made from a pill bottle lid, that opens and closes on a hinge.

The Green Music Room

The “green music room” was my last addition before I went to college. I took special care to make sheet music for classical music and a flute for the little girl to play.

If you look closely at the tea cart, it has wheels made of old loop earrings in the front, and wheels made of wooden beads in the back.

The brass bench is made from the round ink tubes inside of ink pens, wired together.

The plants in the music room are made with wire and small pieces of paper, painted green. Now here is the most shocking material I used in the dollhouse: old bullet shells! I found about a dozen brass bullet shells out at an old firing range while camping. I was young and did not know what they were. I thought to myself, these are pretty and are just the right size to be cups and vases in my dollhouse.