Christmas house decoration, Free Printable

Hello, Just a quick mini printable before Christmas! This is a scaled down version of a lovely french card model that was posted on flickr by Patricia, this little house is called Chalet Suedois. I absolutely love her Flickr site, and have made up quite a few of the models she has very kindly scanned and shared.

I made this tiny card model a few years ago, but decided to put a printable of it up, which is a little different from that shown above. I've now put yellow in every window, so that anyone who doesn't want to cut the windows out will have the "lights on" in the house. I also darkened the colours in one version. I've printed neither of these new printables, but I hope they'll be ok...its almost Christmas Eve, no time, no time :D

The snow is a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and glue, with some glitter mixed in for sparkle. I'm afraid I have no ratio for that, it was a bit hit and miss as I remember.... and a few layers of it as well. 

...there are also no instructions per se, I'm hoping anybody that prints them out will be able to figure out what goes where, though I've a few pointers ahead. Oh and the finished one should help out if needed, I hope. I'm not one for tabs, but I've put a few in anyway. Just play around with it! You can do it! :D

Unfortunately my Christmas tree lights are broken and this isn't as pretty as it could have been...

Don't forget to score these and crease accordingly, I remember being stumped by this briefly.. One wall higher than the other? Oh I see....(refer to finished model). That is the balcony floating above the wall, and goes on the front of the house above the door.

And that's everything in the printable, a base, two rooves, the main building, the gable ends and two chimneys (which I wouldn't bother with :D), oh and a tiny fiddly balcony too.  Those arrows are everywhere that needs creased, do not cut! This is the dark version in this image. It's basically a fancy Putz house that you can add more to as you see fit.

You can remove the smaller roofed building so that it can be placed further back on the large roof, or just leave it as is.



Links to both printables below!

Light version

Dark version

Well this was a bit thrown together and last minute, as I'm sure you can tell. Have a great Christmas!

Sarah x

Happy Halloween

Have a great Halloween! 

Sarah x

Queen Mary doll's house linens by The Old Bleach Linen Company

We have a very small collection of miniature linens made in N.Ireland, housed at our local museum, the Lisburn Linen Centre. I have been meaning to get photos of these for a good while now, finally got around to it. Please excuse the poor quality in my photos, they keep the lighting very, very low to preserve the fabrics.  You can right click on an image and open in a new tab if you want to get a closer look.

The following text is transcribed from the information boards at the display. (everything in "..")

"Doll's houses have always been a toy for the wealthy as well as a plaything for children. One of the best known is Queen Mary's doll's house which was designed for her in the 1920s by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the noted architect. Built in 1/12 scale, the house was furnished throughout by British Craftsmen and manufacturers. The doll's house was intended as a token of national goodwill and to provide a means of raising funds for charity.  For this purpose it was exhibited at the British Empire exhibition in 1934. It is now on display in Windsor Castle."

"Miniature items prepared for Queen Mary's doll's house. 

Woven by The Old Bleach Linen Company, Randalstown, Co. Antrim. 

Given by Mrs C. W. Bingley, London, 1995"

Image courtesy of Oldbleach.co.uk, hope they don't mind me borrowing it... Don't be fooled, our view of the sun rarely looks like that :D

"These linen sheets and pillowcases, diaper and huck towelling and household cloths were for the use of a miniature royal household and it's servants. Those for the personal use of the royal family of dolls had the hand embroidered cypher of George V while the items with the red markings were to be used by the servants of the royal household"

To help with scale, the box is 10 x 3.5 cm.

Bed linen

Bed linen detail

Towels

"These miniature Irish damask tablecloths and napkins were intended for use when the doll royal family held luncheon or dinner parties"

Tablecloth and a box of napkins on the right. These are just beautiful in person!

Tablecloth and napkin. True colour.

You can see the pattern a bit better in this one.

In the comment section, Sharon asked a good question about how these came to be in my local museum and not in the Queen Mary's dollshouse, and wondering about the scale. Unfortunately I had no way of showing scale in the photos, now with dimensions for the box this should help. 

I found two links, which shows that the company sold the miniature household linen to the general public. They used the association with the Queen's dollshouse, as a sort of Royal warrant of appointment, as evidenced on the packaging...."They are made by the Old Bleach Linen co.Ltd of Randalstown,Northen Ireland-who made all the house hold linen for the Queens dolls house-you can always write to them about anything to do with linen" Rather tempted to write to them, if they are still around.

Worth having a look at it, if you are interested in vintage miniatures. 

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/antique-bleach-pure-linen-towels-219626048

http://www.vectis.co.uk/Page/ViewLot.aspx?LotId=82977&Section=1321

I doubt the damask tablecloths were available to buy, from what I have found online...

Princess Marie Louise 'borrowed' one of King George's despatch boxes to be uncannily reproduced in miniature. She sent a linen tablecloth from Buckingham Palace to Belfast to be copied, and so on.

Thanks Sharon! I'm pleased to have this new information added to the post :)

And I'm away again, I have neglected everyone's blogs, apologies for that, will be back soon! :D 

Hope you all had a great Christmas and happy new year!

Hello there, I am communicating to you via a smartphone! :D Unfortunately my laptop sounds like an angry helicopter, a few minutes after it is switched on, and heating up rather fast....this has been going on for awhile. So my new year resolution is to get that fan fixed!!! As it so happens I had nothing much to post about except for some 1:12 christmas crackers which I also wanted to write a tutorial about, alas it will have to be done out of season. The gift I was making for Pepper had to be scrapped due to a few mistakes I made, which I'll post about too.
 Hopefully with a happy outcome by then :) hmmmm so for now I wish you all a fantastic 2016! I'm just going to do a little experiment and see if I can get a picture of those crackers up......

Yay! It worked..I should mention I haven't had a mobile phone for many years. This is all very new to me...bit like being in the film Minority Report. I'm amazed at this technology!  takes a awhile to write something though...spell check is very, very persistent!

Hope you all had a super christmas, and big thanks to the ladies who sent me a link to the Christmas decoration boxes you made! Thoroughly enjoyed that and will link to your work once I'm back on the laptop for I do not have a clue how to do it right now :D