Tiny things: dollhouses and miniatures and such

A thread for TINY THINGS. Your dollhouses and miniatures: show me them.

As for mine... I've been bingewatching HMS2 and other miniature-maker channels, and this shit has always fascinated me, so I thought I'd give it a try. I have none finished yet, but I have this progress video of a scratch build:



And I'm working on this kit:



...except doing it up Silent Hill style. I'm recording video of that process too, but for now here's where I am on it as of this morning:



Repainted and weathered the frame, installed floor/ceiling/wallpaper. I'm using the floor that comes with the kit, but replaced the ceiling and wallpaper with suitable scrapbook paper.

 

Comes in, sets up camp, YES.

Miniatures and doll house videos have been a big thing in my youtube watching of late. Dolls are a frequent on and off phase for me.

Your builds so far are looking really cool! I have not seen enough dilapidated horror stuff in my browsing so far though I admit I have not searched for it. If you know any other channels that do it, gimme the links.

And what are you going to be putting in your from scratch room?



I keep wanting to get into doing my own making of things, maybe following this thread will give me a bit of a kick to get started on that? I used to experiment with doll repaints and stuff but got discouraged cause noobish me did not exactly get perfect results. But, I own a BJD I would like to actually get my monies worth out of her and make tiny little props and stuff alongside more dollhouse scale stuff.

I remember watching videos for dollhouse scale dollhouses and those were very !!!! to me. They seem like a fun project but working in teeny tiny scale is maybe a little ambitious for starting out?

 

The scratch room is going to be the mayor's office in a very run-down town hall in a very run-down town, lol. I'm going to make a desk and a couple of chairs, a bookshelf, a whiteboard, and various office bits to put on the desk/shelves, plus a shitty mall sword to hang on the wall.

You might check out this channel, this guy does most of his stuff out of paper and foam board and that might be a good way to start out!

Sadly I have not seen any mini/dollhouse channels that do any kind of horror aesthetic beyond cute Halloween type stuff once in a while but here are some pointers:

Crackle medium, sea sponges, sandpaper, wire brushes, steel wool, sepia/brown/black india inks, silver Sharpies, cheap pastels, and matte mod podge are your friends. These can all be used to very easily weather your stuff and make cute new stuff look old and ugly in the good way.

Coat of paint + coat of crackle medium + coat of contrasting paint = nice old-paint effects, particularly on wood.

Wire brushes, steel wool, sandpaper, and anything else that's scrubby can take the shine off a pristine new finish. Especially use these on the edges and top corners of a piece of furniture, these are places where it would see natural wear IRL.

Beating on wood with a bunch of nuts and eyebolts and keys and crap like that threaded onto a string like a bracelet will produce interesting effects.

Ink can be watered down and wiped off for a subtle stain, or dabbed on full strength for extra grunge.

Use silver Sharpie to add wear to edges and corners of "metal" pieces.

Mix ink and maybe a little salt, sand, and/or dirt into mod podge for cool effects. If even your matte mod podge is too shiny, rub or brush it with cornstarch + brownish and/or grayish pastel dust after it dries.

 

• Built/repainted/grungified the yellow shelves
• Assembled/grungified tiny oil lamp
• Assembled the flower pot, still needs grungified
• Not pictured: approx. 500000000 tiny leaves cut out of green paper + florist wire bent into vine shapes, leaves are to be stuck on wires, vines are to be stuck in pot and will get a light brushing with black and brown to knock the healthy green off them.

 

The kit comes with a little bit of clear plastic tubing to cut into "canned fruit" and "tea" jars, but it kinda got squished and I couldn't quite get it unsquished, and also it was a little too clear and pretty for my purposes. Luckily there's been a few feet of old yellowed tubing sitting in a drawer at work since before I came to work there, so I borrowed a few inches and cut me some nice aged-looking jars. Just poured clear resin bottoms into them, when I get home tonight I'll mix some brown resin and pour that in along with a bunch of little clay bits that might or might not be gibs. The effect I'm shooting for is "there's something in this jar, you don't know wtf it is but you're pretty sure it's not good eatin"

...okay, they're totally gibs

 

THE GIB JARS

I'd just poured the resin when I took this, the bubbles are working themselves out as the resin cures. I... may have stolen my cats' HexBug and turned it on and used it to help vibrate some of the bubbles loose.

I colored the resin with some brown Ice Resin tint stuff, but that wasn't quite what I was after so I added the tiniest drop of gray acrylic paint. PERFECT!

 

That is a really nice photo of the jars. They look nice and unsettling

 

Eee, thank. This is the first thing i've ever done with resin and I am just. So happy. with the way they turned out. I have lids made and ready to be painted, but may not put them on. Or I might just put one on the tall jar and leave the short one open.

The next shelf down has a wine bottle and a basket that's supposed to contain "fruit" which is just ...beads and shit. Yeah, no, we're not doing beads-and-shit fruit. I'm going to make a couple of pieces of polymer clay fruit, then make a couple of little cloth bundles tied up with hemp cord or something to take up the rest of the space.

 

Quarter included for scale.

That's the basket that was supposed to have "fruit" in it, and I thought I might make polymer clay fruit and paint it up rotten but it didn't quite sit right with me. So I was making covers for the Crimson Ceremony and Lost Memory books that'll be going in later and thought what the hell, I'll do Mary's letter too, maybe I can work that in... heeeeeeeey I could fill that basket with letters!

I Google image searched "envelope pattern," grabbed the first thing that came up, shrunk it down, printed off a bunch of them on ivory paper, folded and glued them, and added stamps and writing and such with Tombow markers and a tiny technical pen.

The wine bottle is more beads-n-shit and it has a round bottom so it doesn't stand up on its own. I'll have to do something about that.

 

Three different people in three different social circles, one of whom was my own mother, said the green bottle looked like a bong. Which... yeah, you know what, fair enough.

So the bongttle got replaced with a storebought mini wine bottle.

Also the book that comes with the kit would be okay bookshelf filler for another project but is kinda crap for my purposes, I'm making my own Crimson Ceremony and Lost Memories books. Here's CC; I'd still like to touch the page edges with a little gold ink and mod podge the cover, but look at my tiny book u guys it turned out so good omg.

 

I'm really enjoying following along here, everything you're making looks so cool omg

 

oh dang you guys look at these tiny wood boxes made out of popsicle sticks.

 

Sharing teeny tiny videos time

As I says, I really like doll house sized dollhouses and this lady does a lot of those and like scenes inside mint tins and ahh, so small.




and I see that video you post is the square to spare who I also love muchly and has also done dollhouse dollhouse.

 

Man, Square to Spare does AMAZING stuff. I just found AkameruKawaii and spent an evening bingewatching her miniature vids, she does some cool wizarding bits and stuff.

 

Welp, I just ordered a thing

I was going to wait until I finished the current kit to order a new one, but then I figured since it's going to be a Christmas present I better go ahead and order it now just to be sure it gets here in time to be put together and wrapped.

 

OK SO: none of this stuff is glued into the frame yet but I put it in just to see what it'd look like and oh man

Spoiler: cut for lorg

oh man oh man I'm so happy

 

Decided to replace the cute tall plant the kit tells you to make with Toadstools from SH4. Yes, the rest of the build has been pretty solidly SH2-inspired but I needed a tall plant, I left the ivy pretty much as prescribed so it needed to be a creepy plant and there's a dearth of plant-based Silent Hill monsters, and besides there are enough connections between SH2 and SH4 to make it OK.

Anyway, these guys still aren't painted but they did get their stalks wrapped in tissue paper dabbed with watered-down glue. They'll get painted and potted when I get home. And that's the last thing that needs done before furniture starts getting glued in the box. Speaking of which...



Yes, the light works! I did hook it up way different from the instructions--the lamp itself is built pretty much to spec, but the instructions call for it to be "mounted" to the wall by way of a twisted wire bracket that the bottom of the lamp just sits on, with the battery wires going out the top of the lamp and through a hole in the skylight, right out there in the open.

Yeah... how about no. Instead I rigged a bit of "conduit" out of the bendy bit of a straw, a snip of a slightly bigger straw, and a bit of cardboard, drilled a hole in the back of the box, and ran the wires through the straw-conduit and out the back of the box. MUCH BETTER. Also I Sharpied both the bead that forms the lamp glass and the LED itself.

And finally, back in the Mayor's office...



A very useful book for the Mayor.

 

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S DONE

Spoiler: moar pix

I got a hell of a lot of video to edit together, but hopefully there'll be a process vid in a few days. :D

 

It turned out amazing! I love how the face mushrooms look and I'm enjoying checking out all the other little details like the rust leaking down from the handle on that cabinet.

 

eeee thank

I need to get some more good pics with the light on, and I need to put a latch or something on it to keep the frame closed before I can hang it on the wall, but eeeee