Friends, I’m so excited about this one. A few weeks ago my daughter fell in love with a dollhouse at a friend’s house and it made my heart explode. You see, currently, in our house the toys are mostly of the super hero variety, so when I saw her affection for something a little prettier than Captain America, I jumped ALL over it and knew I needed to make her one of her own.
To make my dollhouse dreams a reality, I teamed up with our friends at Plaid Crafts to make this little beauty. This year there are so many new and exciting products at Plaid and I decided to use one of my favorites to make the dollhouse: FolkArt Milk Paint! This paint was really the superstar of this project. It is the first milk paint on the market that is manufactured as a convenient, pre-mixed casein-based paint that won’t spoil like the powdered ready-to mix paint brands. It is known for its durability and beautiful velvety smooth finish that brushes like a stain but looks like a paint! It is a dream to work with and was such a perfect choice for this project.
Now, let’s build a dollhouse, shall we?
First, the house. The talented people at ToysHouse83 sent over one of their gorgeous dollhouse kits for this project. It was so easy to put together, is beautifully made, and I couldn’t be more obsessed with the house or the other lovely wood pieces in their shop. Plus, the house came with the sweetest design touches like a skylight and fireplace, making it so unique. If you are thinking of making a dollhouse, I can’t recommend them enough!
To begin the project, I started by only building the foundation of the house to make it easier to paint.
After taping everything off I got to painting! For this project I used four of the FolkArt Milk Paint colors: Pale Peach, Monument Grey, and Tavern Ale for the walls in three of the rooms and roof, and Milky White for the floors and the exterior. To me, the best part about using this paint for this project is that it is so unforgiving and finishes beautifully, plus I love how it lets just enough of the natural wood grain peek through. You can see the entire gorgeous color line here:
After I finished painting, it was time for wall papering! For this part of the project I found papers I loved from my local craft store and used Mod Podge to apply them. Using Mod Podge gives the paper a real wallpapered look that I am obsessed with. Plus, I used the matte formula so there is a really subtle gloss.
When using Mod Podge for a bigger, more high-stakes project like this one, it’s a really good idea to brush up on the steps for applying it correctly. Plaid has a treasure trove of videos and FAQ’s that I went through as a refresher to make sure the papers were applied smoothly, which I totally recommend that you check out.
Done! Now it’s time to furnish this baby!
Since I loved the way the FolkArt Milk Paint looked on the house, I knew I wanted to get some unfinished wood pieces that I could paint for the interior. For the beds, I found two wooden boxes and some small, credit-card shaped wood pieces at the craft store, glued them together and painted them with the Milk Paint. I also found a small unfinished jewelry box for a dresser, some tiny frames for a few gallery walls, a crib, and some little peg people, and painted them all using the Milk Paint.
FolkArt Milk Paint will be available in all major retailers beginning this month, so keep an eye out for this FAB product and get ready to make some gorgeous stuff.
ox. Liz
This is over-the-top adorable! I can’t even handle it…aaaahhhhh! I want it for myself!!
Amazing!
LOVE!!! That is the cutest dollhouse – you did such a great job!!
Oh my gosh, that’s the cutest thing EVER! Think I could convince my 3 boys that they need one of these? LOL! Love it.
Cute as can be!
Beautiful! I love it!!! Very good work!