Here is something to do on a rainy day [if you're living in Melbourne this can happen any moment; if you're living in Darwin you can set your clock by it at 4 PM.]. It is a papercraft doll house.
Yesterday I set to it with my paper supplies and two empty tissue boxes and worked over a two hour period [ taking into consideration the lunch break]. The result was a homemade doll house. It is Gwen's first doll house and it is pretty neat I must say. I had such a fun time making the house.
When I was a little girl I used to this sort of thing - just crafting stuff with paper, scissors and an entire roll of sticky tape. It felt good to get back into that child-like creative space, of not following set instructions and just letting the project develop itself naturally.
You can use the following photos [which document my doll house construction process] to make your own doll house. All you need are two tissue boxes [or as many as you wish], paper, card, textas and pencils, scissors, sticky tape, ruler and paint. This sounds like a lot, but you can simply use any scrap paper or card you have about your house. Think green! For instance, to make the roofline you could use last year's Chrismas cards.
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| Cut off the top/lid of the tissue box. |
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| Tape together the two tissue boxes. Stick down trimmed paper for the floor and ceilings. |
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| Looking good. |
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| Draw on to trimmed paper some wall details. There are three walls per room/tissue box. Use a ruler to get an estimate of how much to trim the paper. Colour in the wall details. |
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| Stick the wall details into the tissue box. Fold scrap card in half and tape to the top tissue box, creating a triangular roofline. |
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| Still looking good. |
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| Oh yeah! |
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| Cut a triangle piece of paper/card same size as the roof, and glue to the back, thus creating an attic. |
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| Now you can paint the exterior of the house. If you have a variety of paints, try something creative with extra details - windows, doors, flowerbeds. |
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| With your left over card do some cutting and folding and you've got some basic furniture - like a bed or a table. |
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| Oh! And don't forget some little paper people to live in the lovely paper house. |
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| Tah-dah! She loves it. |
Drop me a line if you try this rainy day papercraft project. I'd love to see how it went.
