Undersized Urbanite - Pretty Sure I'm Entering This Year

Christina over at Little Victorian is hosting The Undersized Urbanite Dollhouse Contest once again, and although it's been open for entries since September - I'm just now getting to it. And honestly I wasn't sure I was even going to enter this year, but between months of working like a crazy person, and more recently coming down with a cold bad enough that it killed my ambition there for a bit (and got me thinking about how much I'd been working lately), I decided that it was time that I get back into the art studio and work on something just because I wanted to make something cool/for my own enjoyment. Sound good to you? Ok, then here we go;

A year or two ago I stumbled upon one of those puzzle dollhouses on a clearance rack for $3.00, because the packaging had been torn open and it looked like there were pieces missing (turns out it was all there, but either way $3 is a steal for any kit) 

I spent an evening in the art studio with my friends/co-artists. They worked on their projects while I popped together the dollhouse before deciding what to do with it.

A couple days later, at 5am or so while I was at work, I had this idea that the dollhouse is going to end up looking pretty weird this time around. At first I was referring to the idea as a "mushroom" (it does sort of look like that in my head), but my friends were getting too caught up in the idea of it being a mushroom house when really the better term is just to refer to the plan as a Surreal styled dollhouse - There you go, My plan is to make a Surreal looking dollhouse. The photo above is the color scheme I think I've chosen for the exterior (here's hoping that the red/green/purple combo doesn't come back to bite me). And I also had these 2 little wooden birdhouses I thought I could use as odd shaped additions.

Since the studio gives me more space to work I might attempt a small yard, and for that I might just use some of these floor tiles I picked up at a garage sale last summer. They look like stone and I've been wanting to find a use for them. Have to get a board or something to use for a base first, but it's do-able.

The puzzle house is not one inch scale like I'm used to (half inch scale maybe?) and I don't have any furniture that fits. Luckily, I did buy this furniture puzzle hoping the furniture would work with a different dollhouse, but it too appears to be closer to half inch scale and will probably work better for this project. If that doesn't work, I'm sure I could manage with scratch building, but since I only have until February it would be nice if the puzzle furniture worked out.

Back to the house building now;

After following the directions to see how the house is supposed to be put together (which you just saw), I started making changes. Here's me figuring out how to attach the bird house rooms.

And here's how I left the house in the studio on day #2 of this build. The roof is off while I paint it red. The porch is being all torn apart and redesigned to make room for the bird house on the right (which is attached with nothing other than tape and paper towels for now). I know it's starting to look funny, but the idea in my head is pretty cool, so I'm hoping I can make it turn out the way I want.

No promises that I can make the deadline on this one, but I'm going to try. Stay tuned. ^_^