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NOT MY DOLLHOUSE BUT VERY PRETTY

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Scottie Crafts Blog: Policy Envelope Mini Album

Scottie Crafts Blog: Policy Envelope Mini Album: Hey Crafters I'm still working with The paper collection from Kaisercraft called Confetti .  A fun summery collection with heaps of e...

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

History Of Miniature Dollhouses

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollhouse A dollhouse or doll's house is often a toy home, made in miniature. For the last century, dollhouses have primarily been the domain of children but their collection and crafting is also a hobby for many adults. The term dollhouse is common in the United States and Canada. In UK the terms dolls' house or dollshouse are used. Dollhouses can range from the amateur miniaturist placing a few decorated boxes on top of one another to be enjoyed by one person, up to incomparable multi-million dollar structures viewed by millions of people each year (see Notable Dollhouses below).
Today's children's dollhouses trace their history back about four hundred years to the baby house display cases of Europe, which showed idealized interiors. Smaller dollhouses with more realistic exteriors appeared in Europe in the 18th century. Early dollhouses were all handmade, but following the Industrial Revolution and World War II, they were increasingly mass-produced and became more standardized and affordable.
Contemporary children's play dollhouses are mostly in 1:18 (or 2/3") scale, while 1:12 (or 1") scale is common for dollhouses made for adult collectors.
Miniature homes, furnished with domestic articles and resident inhabitants, both people and animals, have been made for thousands of years. The earliest known examples were found in the Egyptian tombs of the Old Kingdom, created nearly five thousand years ago. These wooden models of servants, furnishings, boats, livestock and pets placed in the Pyramids almost certainly were made for religious purposes.
The earliest known European dollhouses were from the 16th century, were each hand-made and unique, and consisted of cabinet display cases made up of individual rooms. One good example of this was when Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria ordered a miniature copy of a royal residence in 1557. Most other dollhouses of this period showed idealized interiors complete with extremely detailed furnishings and accessories. The cabinets were built with architectural details and filled with miniature household items and were solely the playthings of adults. They were off-limits to children, not because of safety concerns for the child but for the dollhouse. Such cabinet houses  were trophy collections owned by the few matrons living in the cities of Holland, England and Germany who were wealthy enough to afford them, and, fully furnished, were worth the price of a modest full-size house's construction.

A 17th century Nuremberg, Germany dollhouse
Wealthy patrician families adopted the idea in the 17th and 18th centuries and had copies made of their own homes. These sumptuous individual pieces were miniature works of art. They were not intended to be used for play, but to demonstrate the owner’s prestige and standing. Series production of doll’s houses began in the second half of the 19th century when parents began to use doll’s houses to prepare their children for their role in society.
Smaller doll houses such as the Tate house, with more realistic exteriors, appeared in Europe in the 18th century.
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass-producing toys, including dollhouses and miniatures suitable for furnishing them. German companies noted for their dollhouses included Christian Hacker, Moritz Gottschalk, Elastolin, and Moritz Reichel. The list of important English companies includes Silber & Fleming, Evans & Cartwright, and Lines Brothers (which became Tri-ang). By the end of the 19th century American dollhouses were being made in the United States by The Bliss Manufacturing Company.
Germany was the producer of the most prized dollhouses and doll house miniatures up until World War I. Notable German miniature companies included Märklin, Rock and Graner and others. Their products were not only avidly collected in Central Europe, but regularly exported to Britain and North America. Germany's involvement in WWI seriously impeded both production and export. New manufacturers in other countries arose.

Living room of a Dollhouse in Maine, United States.
The TynieToy Company of Providence, Rhode Island, made authentic replicas of American antique houses and furniture in a uniform scale beginning in about 1917. Other American companies of the early 20th century were Roger Williams Toys, Tootsietoy, Schoenhut, and the Wisconsin Toy Co. Dollhouse dolls and miniatures were also produced in Japan, mostly by copying original German designs.
After World War II, dollshouses continued to be mass-produced but on a much larger scale with less detailed craftsmanship than prior structures. By the 1950s, the typical dollhouse sold commercially was made of painted sheet metal filled with plastic furniture. Such houses cost little enough that the great majority of girls from the developed western countries that were not struggling with rebuilding after World War II could own one.
Dollhouses are available in different forms. They range from Museum quality rare masterpieces, custom built houses made to the customer's design, to ready-made decorated house kits and finished products anyone can buy. Some design and build their own dollhouse. Simpler designs might consist of boxes stacked together and used as rooms. Miniature objects used for decoration inside dollhouses include furniture, interior decorations, dolls and items like books, couches, furniture, wallpaper, and even clocks. Some of these are available ready-made, some are kits but may also be homemade.
There are dozens of miniature trade shows held throughout the year by various miniature organizations and enthusiasts, where artisans and dealers display and sell miniatures. Often, how-to seminars and workshops are part of the show features. Miniature stores also hold classes. There are Internet forums, blogs and using other online social media concentrated in dollhouses and miniatures. Enthusiasts also share images online. Some miniatures are true treasures worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are even miniatures that date back thousands of years.

Construction

In the United States, most houses have an open back and a fancy front facade, while British houses are more likely to have a hinged front that opens to reveal the rooms.
Children's dollhouses during the 20th century have been made from a variety of materials, including metal (tin litho), fibreboard, plastic, and wood. With the exception of Lundby, 2/3-scale furniture for children's dollhouses has most often been made of plastic.
Contemporary kit and fully built houses are typically made of plywood or medium-density fiberboard. Tab-and-slot kits use a thinner plywood and are held together by a system of tabs and slots (plus glue). These houses are usually light-weight and lower cost but often require siding, shingles, or other exterior treatments to look realistic. Kits made from heavier plywood or MDF are held together with nails and glue.

Standard scales


From left: half inch scale, three quarter inch scale, 1 inch scale, 1/10 scale
The baby houses of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the toy dollhouses of the 19th and early 20th century rarely had uniform scales, even for the features or contents of any one individual house. Although a number of manufacturers made lines of miniature toy furniture in the 19th century, these products were not to a strict scale.
Children's play dollhouses from most of the 20th and 21st centuries are 1:18 or two third inch scale (where 1 foot is represented by 2/3 of an inch). Common brands include Lundby (Sweden), Renwal, Plasco, Marx, Petite Princess, and T. Cohn (all American) and Caroline's Home, Barton, Dol-Toi and Tri-ang (English). A few brands use 1:16 or 3/4"-scale.
The most common standard for adult collectors is 1:12 scale, also called 1" or one inch scale (where 1 foot is represented by 1 inch.) Among adult collectors there are also smaller scales which are much more common in the United States than in Britain. 1:24 or half inch scale (1 foot is 1/2") was popular in Marx dollhouses in the 1950s but only became widely available in collectible houses after 2002, about the same time that even smaller scales became more popular, like 1:48 or quarter inch scale (1 foot is 1/4") and 1:144 or "dollhouse for a dollhouse" scale.
In Germany during the middle part of the 20th century 1:10 scale became popular based on the metric system. Dollhouses coming out of Germany today remain closer in scale to 1:10 than 1:12.
The largest common size for dollhouses is 1:6 which is proportionate for Barbie, Ken, Blythe and other dolls 11-12 inches tall.

Notable Dollhouses

There are three major museum quality palatial dollhouses in the world where this art form has been taken to the highest caliber: Queen Mary's Dolls' House; the Dollhouse of Colleen Moore; and Astolat Dollhouse Castle. Each can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, officially appraise over a million dollars, and contains furnishings that are as true-to-life as humanly possible. One of the things you will never see in the interiors of these world-class dollhouses is a doll. The inability to precisely replicate the human body and face in miniature would detract from the accuracy of these perfect miniature settings, whether they be reality themed or fantasy. [18] Even viewing a high quality precision photo of the interior of these magnificent structures will not reveal the photo in fact, is of a collection of miniatures.
Queen Mary's Dolls' House is part of the Royal Collection Trust and is on display at Windor Castle England. When first put on display it was visited by 1.6 million people in seven months in Wembley England. Moore's dollhouse is called the "Fairy Castle" and would cost $7 million if built with today's dollars. It is visited by an estimated 1.5 million people each year where it resides in Chicago at the Museum of Industry and Science. The Astolat Dollhouse Castle is on display at the Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island, New York.All were built to a one-inch to one-foot scale (1:12) although each vary in overall size. The Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House is approximately 5' tall, contains 16 rooms, and required 4 years to construct. The Colleen Moore dollhouse is 7' tall, has twelve rooms, and took 7 years to construct. The Astolat Castle Dollhouse is 9' tall, has 29 rooms, and required more than 10 years to build.
Other popular dollhouses of note are Titania's Palace, Tara's Palace, and the Stettheimer Dollhouse. Titania’s Palace dollhouse is on display at Egeskov Castle in Denmark., Tara's Palace dollhouse is on exhibit at the Museum of Childhood, located in Powerscourt Estate, near Enniskerry, County Wicklow, Ireland.  It was considered one of Ireland's hidden gems after construction was complete.  The Stettheimer Dollhouse is located at the Museum of the City of New York and is known for its unique collection of artworks in miniature. Titiania's Palace is 5' 4" tall, contains 18 rooms, and required 15 years to construct. Tara's Palace is 4'6" in height, contains 22 rooms, and required 10 years to build. It was built under commission and completed in 1922 in Ireland but was won by Denmark in a bidding war in 1978 at a London Auction house. The Irish were so disappointed to lose Titania’s Palace that they built a replacement dollhouse and named it Tara’s Palace.[20] All contain, or were retrofitted to include miniature electrical lighting systems encompassing tiny bulbs, chandeliers, lamps, transformers, and invisible wiring. Titania's Palace has no outside exterior walls. The others, have exterior walls which can be raised up, opened or removed in order to make the viewing of interior rooms easier. The Stettheimer Dollhouse is 28" high and contains 12 rooms. Only the Colleen Moore Dollhouse and the Astolat Dollhouse Castle were specifically designed with certain fixed contiguous exterior walls to create a 3-Dimensional viewing effect.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

How To Start A Scrapbook

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-start-a-scrapbook.html

How to Start a Scrapbook

Before you start a scrapbook, spend some time planning it. Start by collecting items for your scrapbook, and organizing your materials and thoughts so that your finished scrapbooks have the look you want.

Deciding on your scrapbook's purpose

Some people scrapbook because they love the craft. Others care more about highlighting their current family events — for the enjoyment of those living now. Still other scrapbookers focus on preservation and the archival aspects of scrapbooking — always thinking about how long their albums will last.
Understanding your general and specific purposes for scrapbooking focuses your decisions about the direction of your work. The following list helps you determine what your own purpose or purposes for scrapbooking may be:
  • Documenting events and milestones: Scrapbookers make pages and albums about every conceivable event and life milestone. The industry creates themed products that work well with all your events. Whether you want to scrap graduations, birthdays, confirmations, weddings, or travels, you can find stickers, stamps, and plenty of other materials to go on your pages.
  • Focusing on individual biographies: Perhaps you want to scrapbook the life of one family member, an illustrious ancestor or some relative who lived in an interesting historical era.
  • Giving a gift or gratitude book: You can make a mini scrapbook album relatively quickly to give as a gift for a special event (such as a birthday or anniversary), to say thank you, or just because you want to help someone feel better.
  • Illustrating an autobiography: Some of the best scrapbook albums are illustrated autobiographies. No one knows the details of your life as well as you do.
  • Promoting healing: Many a scrapbook served as therapy for people experiencing pain, suffering, and loss by reminding them of the many wonderful experiences they and their loved ones have had and of the sheer fullness and diversity of their lives. The terminally ill often scrapbook their own lives, and many people scrapbook the lives of lost loved ones.
  • Recording an illustrated family history: These albums are like glorified genealogies that chart a family's history as far back as possible.
  • Setting examples: Your purpose may be to use scrapbooks as places where you can make your voice heard and where you can influence your children, your grandchildren, and many others. With photos and journaling, the albums you make document your own and your family's travels, successes, school activities, relocations, deaths, and other experiences that illustrate life's challenges and triumphs.

    Choosing memorabilia and photos for your scrapbook

    At the backs of drawers and shelves or somewhere tucked away in the corners and crevices of a garage, attic, or closet, you have a hidden treasure that we call your M and Ps — your personal and family memorabilia and photographs. When you begin scrapbooking, just finding your M and Ps may require a major effort. But be resolute! Press forward! Your goal is to gather all the memorabilia and photographs together in one place — the bigger the place, the better. Try Print File's drop-front, metal-edge containers for this initial gathering effort. Professional photographers and museums use these lignin-free, acid-free boxes — which range in size from 8-1/2 x 10 inches to 20 x 24 inches and are priced from $10 to $19.95. You can order them direct online at Printfile.
    You don't want to store your M and P treasures in just any big cardboard box you find in the garage. Corrugated material in some of those boxes is not good for your photos, and even though your intentions are noble, you may not get all of those M and Ps out of the box and into archival-safe photo boxes or page protectors straightaway.
    Your memorabilia can include anything you've saved that's small enough to put in a scrapbook: matchbooks, airline tickets, keys, house deeds, and so on. Collecting memorable items can add dimension to your daily life. When you're constantly on the lookout, you come upon memorabilia stuck in the most unlikely spots — and probably smile or shed a few tears as you put an item in your memorabilia holding place.
    After you put all the photographs and memorabilia you can find in the same place, you need to go begging. Ask family members and friends for photos or negatives you may want to use but don't have. Negatives are better because both parties then can hold on to the photos. Whenever possible, make prints from negatives rather than copies of photos because photos made from negatives always are clearer than copies of photographs.
    If you're missing documents, such as birth, marriage, and death certificates, call the counties where the events took place. County officials usually are glad to send you copies of the documents you need for a nominal fee.

    Creating a cohesive scrapbook

    As you get ready to select the items you want to put into a particular scrapbook, ask yourself this question: Does this item contribute to or detract from the unified look of the album? Unity is as critical in scrapbooking as it is in any creative work. You want your scrapbook to look cohesive and to convey a sense of purpose and order. You achieve unity when each part of your scrapbook becomes essential to the whole.
    Following the suggestions we give you in the list that follows can help you narrow your item choices and ensure that you choose items that contribute to the unified look of your album.
  • Decide on a theme. Choose the event or experience that you want to scrapbook @ --  your infamous vacation, for example. Find all the M and Ps from that vacation and put them into page protectors. Then you can select an album (think of the album as your first item) that goes with your vacation theme.
    Just because you put all the big vacation M and Ps into your page protectors doesn't mean that you're going to use all of them in your scrapbook. The selection process is about refining and sifting through the many to finally decide on a choice few.
  • Select the same photographic look. "Photographic look" doesn't mean that all photos you use in your album are exactly the same size or that they all have exactly the same colors. But if you want to create a historic, old-world look with black-and-white photos, use black-and-white pictures throughout the album. As a general rule, using black-and-white photos alongside color photos doesn't contribute to the unified feel that an album needs. But modern scrapbook stylists experiment with breaking a rule and do so successfully. Scrapbooking is full of rule-breakers.
  • Choose a color scheme. You may get ideas for your color palette from your album cover, from one or a series of your photographs, or from some other source.
  • Choose memorabilia related to your purpose and storyline. Look at all the memorabilia that may go into your album and then use the items that best complement the purpose, theme, story, photographs, and colors you've decided to use. A mix of types of memorabilia can add interest: maps and other flat items on some pages and bulkier items on others.
  • Use materials consistently. Choose stickers, papers, and other materials that go well with your photos and memorabilia, the colors in your palette, and each other. Careful thought when making these choices pays off big time in the finished album. Pick an ink color (or colors) for journaling that complements the M and Ps and other items on your pages, and make sure you use quality materials like journaling pens with pigment-based inks.
    Just because you bought out the scrapbook store doesn't mean that you have to use everything in one album. Gather a few goodies that coordinate with your theme and color scheme and have at it! Make it fun and keep it simple, especially when this is your first album. Even seasoned scrappers get carried away when choosing album materials.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Dollhouse History

Miniature homes, furnished with domestic articles and resident inhabitants, both people and animals, have been made for thousands of years. The earliest known examples were found in the Egyptian tombs of the Old Kingdom, created nearly five thousand years ago. These wooden models of servants, furnishings, boats, livestock and pets placed in the Pyramids almost certainly were made for religious purposes.
The earliest known European dollhouses were from the 16th century, were each hand-made and unique, and consisted of cabinet display cases made up of individual rooms. One good example of this was when Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria ordered a miniature copy of a royal residence in 1557. Most other dollhouses of this period showed idealized interiors complete with extremely detailed furnishings and accessories. The cabinets were built with architectural details and filled with miniature household items and were solely the playthings of adults. They were off-limits to children, not because of safety concerns for the child but for the dollhouse. Such cabinet houses [19] were trophy collections owned by the few matrons living in the cities of Holland, England and Germany who were wealthy enough to afford them, and, fully furnished, were worth the price of a modest full-size house's construction.

A 17th century Nuremberg, Germany dollhouse
Wealthy patrician families adopted the idea in the 17th and 18th centuries and had copies made of their own homes. These sumptuous individual pieces were miniature works of art. They were not intended to be used for play, but to demonstrate the owner’s prestige and standing. Series production of doll’s houses began in the second half of the 19th century when parents began to use doll’s houses to prepare their children for their role in society.[20]
Smaller doll houses such as the Tate house, with more realistic exteriors, appeared in Europe in the 18th century.[21]
With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, factories began mass-producing toys, including dollhouses and miniatures suitable for furnishing them. German companies noted for their dollhouses included Christian Hacker, Moritz Gottschalk, Elastolin, and Moritz Reichel. The list of important English companies includes Silber & Fleming, Evans & Cartwright, and Lines Brothers (which became Tri-ang). By the end of the 19th century American dollhouses were being made in the United States by The Bliss Manufacturing Company.
Germany was the producer of the most prized dollhouses and doll house miniatures up until World War I. Notable German miniature companies included Märklin, Rock and Graner and others. Their products were not only avidly collected in Central Europe, but regularly exported to Britain and North America. Germany's involvement in WWI seriously impeded both production and export. New manufacturers in other countries arose.
The TynieToy Company of Providence, Rhode Island, made authentic replicas of American antique houses and furniture in a uniform scale beginning in about 1917.[22] Other American companies of the early 20th century were Roger Williams Toys, Tootsietoy, Schoenhut, and the Wisconsin Toy Co. Dollhouse dolls and miniatures were also produced in Japan, mostly by copying original German designs.
After World War II, dollshouses continued to be mass-produced but on a much larger scale with less detailed craftsmanship than prior structures. By the 1950s, the typical dollhouse sold commercially was made of painted sheet metal filled with plastic furniture. Such houses cost little enough that the great majority of girls from the developed western countries that were not struggling with rebuilding after World War II could own one.