Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Let There Be Tiny Light
Congrats! You found your dollhouse! No? Not to worry if you didn't, it'll pop up. For now, let's talk about the stages of building your house.
Once you have yours built, before you paint and paper, we must light!
Light is one of the more important features. Not only does it make your work visible, it makes it believable! The right lighting can really trick the eye into thinking your 1:12 room is full scale. Take a look at the two images below of the seance room I finished. One is lit with doll lights, the other with an exterior lamp... what do you think?
There are a lot of options out there to light your house. You can buy kits of copper tape and doll light fixtures on ebay and watch these great instructional videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuXcDC--SPI
I prefer a different method. It's less expensive,(about $5.50 per room) and gives you the freedom to use colored LED lights, make your own fixtures, and choose gels to cover your white light with.
I use floral lights meant for bouquets and flower arrangements. These are sold at local craft stores and cost about 4 dollars with a coupon. They have about 10 stems with a bright white light bulb at the end of each strand that's perfectly in scale with 1:12 houses. They are great for wiring around your mini rooms since each strand is about 10 " long. NOTE: DONT buy a strand of lights, these lights are in stems, branching out from a single battery pack.
SPEAKING OF WHICH, they run on two AA batteries. CRAP! Those last about 3-4 hours on a really good day. So how do we make this great lighting last without burning through Duracells?
You have two options for turning these into electrical powered devices. One costs about $16 and is available here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl0r2psFGlU
The other costs about $1.50. It involves you stripping the wires to the floral lights, intertwining them with the wires from a dollar tree USB LED light and then plugging that in. Here are the MEME instructions I came up with. It really is easy to #convertAAbatterypackstoelectricity.
Once you have done this and lit each room, plug each into a USB hub. They are for powering about 3-5 USBs by only using one plug. Fantastic right? They are available all over, but here are some great ones.
ttp://technabob.com/blog/2007/09/04/little-dude-could-be-my-favorite-usb-hub-ever/
LIGHTING TIPS:
1. Remember to use slightly less light, leave a little mystery to the room but make sure things are visible.
2. Light sideways for tall furniture, it gives the room height. Make use of those table lamps and wall sconces.
3. Don't be afraid of a little color. A light blue gel can really make a room feel larger... even if it's 1:12 scale.
HOPE THESE TIPS HELP! More pictures to come!
Monday, June 3, 2013
The House Has Been Chosen!
When making a dollhouse, you have three basic options.
1.) Buy a dollhouse kit and proceed with the long, albeit rewarding, process of gluing together pre cut wooden components into your finished house, then starting the interior design process.
2.) Start from scratch and cut, saw, hammer, and glue a variety of woods to create a custom house of your dreams.
3.) Go bargain hunting somewhere and find a fantastic fixer upper that inspires your inner mini.
For the haunted house you are about to see built, it was a combination of all three... but mostly three. :)
A haunted dollhouse was always an appealing idea to me. It held a lot of promise to show off and hone some skills. The idea popped up while visiting my favorite L.A. shop, Necromance, talking to one of my favorite sales girls, Key. She was discussing her latest venture in trying to taxidermy mice. She said whenever she couldn't get them skinned just right she would dry the little pelts into tiny mouse-skin rugs just for the heck of it. "They'd be great for a creepy dollhouse or something" she laughed.
BAM... inspired.
While walking with two good friends in Silverlake trying to get cash to pay for our parking spot, we stumbled into an old gypsy woman with a beautiful victorian dollhouse dangeling from her horse-drawn wagon...
Kidding...it was a dusty consignment store and a smokey sales guy in his mid 50s. Anyway... in the window was a beautifully simple, 4 story dollhouse. 1:12 scale, hinged in the middle to open like a book. If that weren't awesome enough, it was still filled with tiny trinkets from the former owner.
I knew this was the dollhouse. Fellow artists can back me up on this one, when you find what you've been looking for, you have to have it. Unfortunately, the owner was asking $125.00 for the house. As amazing as it was, I couldn't swing that (and to be honest it wasn't worth that). I decided to try and barter. It wasn't working. According to him it had just come in, was in great shape, and was a steal with all the tiny furniture in it. He wanted to hang on to it to make sure he got the best price. Sigh. Defeated, I left the shop and returned home.
Later that evening on my way to work I swung by the shop. To my astonishment the entire shop had disappeared... like it had never existed in the first place. In it's place was a dusty dirt lot in the middle of which was a sun-beached piece of paper that said...
Kidding... the shop was still there and lucky for me it was a different guy behind the counter! I asked him if he would take $25 for the house and I would lug it away ASAP.
SOLD!!!!
Apparently the dollhouse had been there for months and they were getting ready to toss it. Go figure. Long story short, the house was MINE!
This house has something creepy about it already. For starters it couldn't have been from a kit, it was too simple. It had to have been made by a parent for their kid by hand. The roof's shingles, stone facade and chimney bricks were all hand painting in a chunky, creepily cute way. It was chipped and dinged and in need of a Lysol bath. The moldy, fabric on the walls and fake wood contact paper on the floors suggested it was at least 40 years old, if not more.
A great way to tell the age of something is to look at the color of the wood. As it sits exposed it darkens and looses moisture, creating a more brittle material. This house's wood was dark orange... perfect for tiny ghosts!
Another way to tell it's age was the glue remnants from past fireplaces, picutre frames, and bookshelves. The glue on my house was so aged I could snap every shelf off the walls with ease... and did! It was time for a de- renovation! A make-under! Some curb-a-squeeeeal. I got it home, gutted it out, and decided to start with something small. The fireplace...
Things to Remember:
1.) Find a peice that spe
aks to you and gets you excited to create.
2.) Bargain hunt and barter. A lot of time and cash go into miniatures. Some 1:12 scale pieces of furniture retail for more than life-size ones. Make sure you love it AND the price before you commit to a house or kit.
3.) Beware magical, old, gypsies in Silverlake.
1.) Buy a dollhouse kit and proceed with the long, albeit rewarding, process of gluing together pre cut wooden components into your finished house, then starting the interior design process.
2.) Start from scratch and cut, saw, hammer, and glue a variety of woods to create a custom house of your dreams.
3.) Go bargain hunting somewhere and find a fantastic fixer upper that inspires your inner mini.
For the haunted house you are about to see built, it was a combination of all three... but mostly three. :)
A haunted dollhouse was always an appealing idea to me. It held a lot of promise to show off and hone some skills. The idea popped up while visiting my favorite L.A. shop, Necromance, talking to one of my favorite sales girls, Key. She was discussing her latest venture in trying to taxidermy mice. She said whenever she couldn't get them skinned just right she would dry the little pelts into tiny mouse-skin rugs just for the heck of it. "They'd be great for a creepy dollhouse or something" she laughed.
BAM... inspired.
While walking with two good friends in Silverlake trying to get cash to pay for our parking spot, we stumbled into an old gypsy woman with a beautiful victorian dollhouse dangeling from her horse-drawn wagon...
Kidding...it was a dusty consignment store and a smokey sales guy in his mid 50s. Anyway... in the window was a beautifully simple, 4 story dollhouse. 1:12 scale, hinged in the middle to open like a book. If that weren't awesome enough, it was still filled with tiny trinkets from the former owner.
I knew this was the dollhouse. Fellow artists can back me up on this one, when you find what you've been looking for, you have to have it. Unfortunately, the owner was asking $125.00 for the house. As amazing as it was, I couldn't swing that (and to be honest it wasn't worth that). I decided to try and barter. It wasn't working. According to him it had just come in, was in great shape, and was a steal with all the tiny furniture in it. He wanted to hang on to it to make sure he got the best price. Sigh. Defeated, I left the shop and returned home.
Later that evening on my way to work I swung by the shop. To my astonishment the entire shop had disappeared... like it had never existed in the first place. In it's place was a dusty dirt lot in the middle of which was a sun-beached piece of paper that said...
Kidding... the shop was still there and lucky for me it was a different guy behind the counter! I asked him if he would take $25 for the house and I would lug it away ASAP.
SOLD!!!!
Apparently the dollhouse had been there for months and they were getting ready to toss it. Go figure. Long story short, the house was MINE!
This house has something creepy about it already. For starters it couldn't have been from a kit, it was too simple. It had to have been made by a parent for their kid by hand. The roof's shingles, stone facade and chimney bricks were all hand painting in a chunky, creepily cute way. It was chipped and dinged and in need of a Lysol bath. The moldy, fabric on the walls and fake wood contact paper on the floors suggested it was at least 40 years old, if not more.
A great way to tell the age of something is to look at the color of the wood. As it sits exposed it darkens and looses moisture, creating a more brittle material. This house's wood was dark orange... perfect for tiny ghosts!
Another way to tell it's age was the glue remnants from past fireplaces, picutre frames, and bookshelves. The glue on my house was so aged I could snap every shelf off the walls with ease... and did! It was time for a de- renovation! A make-under! Some curb-a-squeeeeal. I got it home, gutted it out, and decided to start with something small. The fireplace...
Things to Remember:
1.) Find a peice that spe
2.) Bargain hunt and barter. A lot of time and cash go into miniatures. Some 1:12 scale pieces of furniture retail for more than life-size ones. Make sure you love it AND the price before you commit to a house or kit.
3.) Beware magical, old, gypsies in Silverlake.
A Haunting Hello
Welcome to the first installment of Haunted Minis, a new blog for creative folks with a flair for the frightening. This blog is dedicated to the creation of a one of a kind, miniature Haunted Dollhouse and the macabre miniatures that inhabit it. As the house is being built, you can follow up on the creative processes...some brilliant, some terrible... in fabricating these 1:12 scale nightmares.
Who am I you ask? Daniel! An artist with film and television experience as a miniatures artist for various sets, puppets, dolls and scale models. Wanna see my work? Visit www.HirschArt.com for pictures.
This blog will share with you everything I know and hopefully convey little tips and tricks (no pun intended) about what exactly goes into the making of these itty bitty props and sets...from a tiny coffin to the tiny vampire inside of it... even the extra tiny strand of rotted garlic warding him off from rising to kill the tiny woman sleeping in the tiny... well you get the picture.
Thank you for joining, clicking, viewing and sharing! Lets get started!
Who am I you ask? Daniel! An artist with film and television experience as a miniatures artist for various sets, puppets, dolls and scale models. Wanna see my work? Visit www.HirschArt.com for pictures.
This blog will share with you everything I know and hopefully convey little tips and tricks (no pun intended) about what exactly goes into the making of these itty bitty props and sets...from a tiny coffin to the tiny vampire inside of it... even the extra tiny strand of rotted garlic warding him off from rising to kill the tiny woman sleeping in the tiny... well you get the picture.
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