Dollhouses: Prêt-a-Porter

Casas de Beltrán - Spanich architecture, refreshingly different from the usual crop

Image by Upon a Fold
A less practical dollhouse but very pretty in all its pristine paper whiteness.

Maileg Mouse Milk Carton House

More Paper:
Kroom's cardboard dollhouse.

Joe Freedman's beautiful but 1/2" scale paper dollhouse.


Wood:
Image by Playsam
Check out the curves on this beauty by Eva Schildt, available from Playsam.
Image by David Lee Design
This is an intriguing design from David Lee Design. Be sure to visit his site for more pictures of it unfolded. It should be available in October. I am waiting to hear back how much it will cost. I am a bit worried about its scale. It seems a bit small for 1:12.
17.xi.10 UPDATE: I read somewhere that this is not 1:12. What a dreadful shame! I believe it is 1:18 or something along those lines.

Image by Our Children's Gorilla
Nice geometry here with punchy colours.
Available from Our Children's Gorilla and other retailers.

Decor:
Image by Chen Karlsson
And if you do not have room for a dollhouse, not even a roombox, you can shell out for this clever display.

Plans:
Betsy McCall Dollhouse No. 150W

Digital:
Online subscription based Digital Dollhouse.

Art:
Heather Benning's giant dollhouse installation.

And I must not forget I still have this hiding on top of the refrigerator. Tsk, tsk.

Dollhouse: Inspiration

Image from The NY Times Magazine
General:
Enfilade - but at a Gustavian scale not a Baroque scale
Eloise Moorehead's renovation of her childhood dollhouse - but also anything else she has to say on the subject of dollhouses.

Now I know what to do with that small, white, glass Red Rose rabbit that has been rattling around my kitchen.

Diary of a Dollhouse
Lucy May Schofield's Dolls House
Lonny's 2010 1 Week Challenge Dollhouse from Curbed.
Mousehouse's bright and pretty, but still modern, playline renovation.
Michael Williams's Johnathan Adler-esque Barbie House - this one is actually a set of dioramas but is has a great, bold sense of colour and pattern.


Architecture:
Secret Rooms - Meghan Boody’s at The NY Times Magazine (courtesy of Eloise Moorehead) - The Secret Playroom reminds me of my less tricked-out cupboard childhood lair

Walls:
Phases of the moon like those by Bartsch
Cole & Sons Woods wallpaper - ominous
Cole & Sons Woodstock wallpaper - à la Suspiria

Stairs:
A ribbon for a runner like at Making It Lovely

Cottage Town

Remember Minature Gardens and Thyrza Segal's creatures?

In a similar vein: Cottage Town by Ontwerpduo. From their site:

Change your potplant into a mini village with 'Cottage Town', and ordinary plants will be turned into huge trees or fields. These tilted tiny constructions in soft colours are made of waterproof 'paper', and can resist rain from a watering can. Fold and place your own house into the nicest plant you can find, or give away as a present with the enclosed wishcard.

Available at BijzonderMooi

Dollhouses: Tools

Small Manual Saws
Karin Corbin's Roundup - the flush cutting saw sounds useful!

Digital Calipers:
Karin Corbin's Review
Amazing Miniatures's Review
Wixey

Miter Cutter
MidwestProducts Ultimate Cutter - Amazing Miniature's Pick
Miter Master

Needle-tip Glue Applicator

Micro-Mark's Magnetic Gluing Jig

Clamps

Dollhouse: Amsterdam Canal House

Image from Our Lord In the Attic.

Josje's Canal House - this is exactly what I had in mind!

The Crooked House from Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place
Anne Frank House
Getty - nice sections and elevations

Cookie Ziemba's 17th Century Dutch Canal Dollhouse - built by Peter Mattinson
NGA Kids - Interactive Dutch Dollhouse

Related:
75 1/2 Bedford Street - not Dutch and not a canal house but narrow and reminiscent; great description by wallyg.

Dollhouse: DIY Supplies

Architectural Elements
Miniatures.com

Victorian Dollhouse
Swan House - nice selection of architectural elements

Decor:
Itsy Bitsy Mini - wallpaper, fabric ... murals!

Furniture & Tchoktes:
Kari Bloom - Arts and Crafts and other retro style furniture
Marquis Miniatures - messy, nitty-gritty accessories of life

Many, many of these were discovered while reading Eloise Morehead's blog.

Dollhouse: NYT Article with Sources

This New York Times article comes courtesy of a good friend in, suitably, NYC.
J. Courtney Sullivan's list of favourite online miniature sources form the article:

Boston Miniatures - apparently her go-to site.
Kent's Minis - especially for the laundry.
Amazing Miniatures - also a very good blogger.
Literature in Miniature - The Origin of Species or Mrs Beeton's Household Management is just what I need.
Tree Feathers - a miniature house of cards!
Pepperwood Miniatures - they do Tiffany lamps!
L. Delaney - clutter up your house in style and in scale.

Tiny Things Are Deadly

Enchanting but addictive sites for small, cute, and (un)necessary tchotchke:

Harapeko Doggy Bag Store - it always seems to have those Re-ment sets you can never find (or afford) elsewhere.

NRFB Queen - Priscilla really is the queen of reasonable Re-ment rates and wonderful service.

Tiny Things Are Cute - an as of yet outmatched inventory of quirky, cute, tiny thingamagigs (e.g., those houses!)

Dollhouses: DIY

Sutton Grace has a template with photo tutorials for a simple house

Maxim Dalton's Mid-Century Modern cutout houses at Imagekind (these would make great wall art too!)

Miniatures: Aquarium

Miniatures: Cardboard Architecture

Benjamin Van Oost's recycled trash Favela (2007) at Craft/Make

Anna Serrano's Cartonlandia (2008)

Stephen Doyle (2011) at Vanity Fair

Re-ment Raffle for Japan

Re-ment photo by Snikey

Help Japan Re-ment Raffle

Miniatures: Ji Lee

Ji Lee's Parallel Worlds - I want to try a version of this!

Dollhouses: Pop-Up

Originally an Ikea catalogue pop-up dollhouse by WeMakePopUpCards

Miniatures: Kiva Ford

Image by Kiva Ford.
So, even if you were not into miniatures, you would still have to stop and admire Kiva Ford's gorgeous, miniature glassware. It is not often that you come across miniatures that would be equally covetable at 1:1 scale.

Kiva Ford on Etsy.
Kiva Ford at Flickr.

Technology: iSight House

Ryuji Nakamura designed a house that provides a Gulliveresque POV for your iSight camera.

Re-ment Hack: DIY Baking Secret Set

Re-ment DIY Baking has a lovely secret set with an iced bundt cake and an even lovelier bundt cake mold. But I could never bring myself to get it because of its dang, ghostly floating pitcher.

Enter Dorothy Alice and her enabling suggestion to hack the set and get rid of the stream of icing.


The stream of icing is connected to the pitcher and plugs into a hole in the bundt's icing. The icing on the cake is raised around this hole like an escutcheon. Removing the connection would involve both infilling and carving.




I first filled it with white glue which was working just okay. The challenge was that, as it dried, the glue would shrink, causing a dimpling at the hole. Over time, with more glue, this lessened. When the glue was smooth on top and dry, I decided to do a little sanding to smooth the edge and shape the infill a bit. The horrifying result was that the glue plug popped out immediately!


Ruling out glue as a filler, I decided to jump right to the acrylic paint. Since the opening is so small, it actually worked well as a filler, requiring fewer treatments to fill the hole. It even took well to sanding without any weakening of the bond.

A few coats of paint and a final application of a satin sealer finished the hack. And I had a lovely bundt cake sans ghostly pitcher at last.


Next up could be the bundt cake in set #8 of Grandma's European Dinners.

Dollhouses: Collapsible

Brinca Dada may be producing a collapsible dollhouse called The Dylan. You can see and read more over at Call of the Small. This could be just the ticket! and the currently proposed pricepoint is not bad.

Dollhouses: Custom (Hollow Frame Construction)

Seen over at One Twelfth Scale Miniatures Blog, stick built construction not only looks like real framing but it has the advantage of being lightweight, allowing for concealed wiring, and needing only small hand, not power, tools.

From Mike's own summary in the comments section of Part 3:

Buy some 1/4" x 3/8" stripwood & use graph paper for your template ... Make a frame for each section ... I space them about 2" apart & also 3" spaces for doors & 2-1/2" for windows or whatever opening you want. I glue a horizontal piece 7" high & another under the windows. And the top & bottom plates (studs) equal the wall lengths.

You'll need matboard to glue on each side of all the frames. I glue the frame on a full sheet of matboard - squaring it into the top left hand corner. Put some weight on it & let it dry, then trim the right & bottom edge, & all the openings. Then flip the frame over & glue it to another sheet of matboard. Put some weight on it & let it dry, then trim the right & bottom edge, & all the openings.

Dry fit, decorate, add doors & windows etc.

Nail, screw, dowel or just clamp & glue all the parts together.

Dollhouses: Custom (3D Modelling and Prototyping)

Sketch Up + Ponoko
Seems like the way to go for a really finished look.
In the interest of a learning curve and frugality, I might try Sketch Up + Gatorboard for now.