Little Jo and I enjoy making paper dolls out of pictures we find in magazines, old books or printed from the internet.  It hadn’t really occurred to me to take it one step further and create dollhouses for our paper creations, but it certainly occurred to Tally Oliveau and Julie Molina, authors of Mixed-Media Dollhouses: Techniques and Ideas for Doll-size Assemblages (Quarry Books).

This book is full of wonderful ideas for taking old boxes, containers, and other items and putting them together to create a piece that you can play with but can also be displayed as art.  I love this creative angle! The book is full of wonderful photos and project ideas, and I found it to be very inspirational.

I pass by a cigar store every day on my way to work, so I will definitely have to stop and ask them for any old boxes so Little Jo and I can try out some of the techniques.  I am thinking it would be a lot of fun to create some fairy and gnome figures out of polymer clay and then create them a mixed media tree house similar to the one in the below right picture.  I love how they used an actual piece of tree bark to put on the front.

Another idea I had looking at the book was to include some twinkly Christmas lights poking through the back of a dollhouse.  You could turn them on at night and have them look like stars or fireflies in the forest.  If we put something like this up in Little Jo’s bedroom, it would make a very unique night light for her.

Now, whenever I am using up old containers, I am thinking about how I could re-purpose them into new rooms for a castle or a tree house.  It’s exciting when you can find a book that will spark so many creative ideas and lead you down a crafting path you otherwise might not have explored!

Here are some of my favorite images from the book. Aren’t they just lovely? If you’d like to give mixed media dollhouses a try, why not check out this wonderful book for some great inspiration!