Attic furnishings: Find all the things that you would love to put in the regular rooms of your dollhouse but you just don't have the right place or decor for. That neat UGLY lamp that has the shade on crooked, mini boxes of photo albums, a dress makers dummy with a dusty straw hat on it. Piles of old rolled up rugs and stacks of paintings leaning against the wall, baby furniture that has a well used and loved feel to it, rusty ice-skates or skis with broken bindings, trunks and luggage, old toys ... The list is deliciously endless!

Leslie

Crackle Finish: Where a crackle finish is wanted and no under coat is wanted, try applying hide glue first and then when it is tacky paint over it. The hide glue shrinks as it dries and pulls the paint away. This is also one method how certain kinds of glass finishes are made. Hide glue is applied to the glass and as it dries it shrinks and pulls out little chunks of glass.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: Before jumping head first into trying out tips, experiment first to see if and how it works for you. Try the hide glue on a piece of scrap wood first and experiment until you find just how it works for you. For goodness' sake don't try glass without face protection shield. I have already tried the glass process as an experiment for a Creters Model D popcorn wagon I want to miniaturize some day. It doesn't work in miniature. You get full size chips and sometimes the complete piece of glass cracks. Some times it doesn't work at all.

Bill Hudson

Homemade Wallpaper Paste: I make my own wallpaper paste (this is the recipe my mother used to use when wallpapering our real house and it does seem to "hold" very well.) I'm not real sure about "measurements" any more, but you can experiment.

Put about 3/4 cold water into a jar that has a lid. Add heaping tablespoon of flour, put on the lid and shake well. Pour that mixture into a pan and slowly bring to a boil, stirring the whole time to avoid lumps. Just after it reaches a boil take it off the stove to cool. The finished mixture should be thin enough to "paint" onto the wall or the paper... but not so thin that it's runny.

Viola Williams

Homemade Wallpaper Paste: This is an old time recipe and it has some problems. The main ones being that flour will mold in time and that it does attract bugs. If you use this paste (or any other) on the back of "prepasted" wallpaper that is available today, then the wallpaper is no longer "strippable" - in fact will be a BEAR to get off in the future. Wallpaper experts and manufacturers advise you NEVER to use this homemade paste because of all the problems.

Marlene

Gold finishing: My hubby is still in the gold business but I switched to this one.  If your gold leaf is karat gold (10, 14, 24, etc.) it will never tarnish.  The gold leaf you buy in craft stores is not karat gold and will turn dark over time but you can coat it with an acrylic matte finish.

Mary Kay

Clear acrylic sheet plastic: I have found it at building supply/hardware stores, being sold as plastic storm windows for the interior of your house. Typically .040" which is a little over 1/32" (.03125).

Tom Berkner

Rigid plastic sheet: You might try framing stores like Aaron brothers or a craft store that sells framing supplies like Michaels. You might try Tap Plastics. They have a huge variety of plastic items, including sheet plastics. They're just getting a website started at www.tapplastics.com, but the page right now just gives you a number to order a catalog. Their number is: 1 800 246-5055.

Trish Billard

Acrylic panes: As I recall, Plexiglas is a trademark for a particular brand of Acrylic. If you want a machinable clear plastic, try Lexan (trademark of GE I think).

Tom Berkner

Cheap mini bricks: Okay, they are cheap, but if worked on a bit, they are great! I took orangy-brick colored construction paper and laid it on newspapers on the floor. Then, I spatter painted them using a grey and a white and a little black. Spatter'd them with an old toothbrush. When dry, I put them thru a paper shredder which gave me nice even 1/4" slices of "brick". Then, I painted the surface I was bricking (I used gray) to simulate mortar. Then, it was a simple matter (a bit tedious, but simple and certainly cheap!) of cutting 5/8" pieces of the strips and applying them to the surface staggered with a tiny gap between each "brick". This method makes it easy to round corners. Learned this method in a 4 day workshop in Giddings Texas where we made a 1/2" scale replica of Stephen F. Austin's 1836 dog-trot cabin a couple of years ago.

Carrie McKinley

Upsidedown Dollhouse: If you have a handyman husband, brother or father around, ask them to make you a cradle for your dollhouse. It is two parts (each identical), with a 12" V cut in a piece of plywood at the correct roof pitch (60 or 45 degrees?) and perpendicular pieces that provide a stable base for them. I hope you're picturing this! Placed on either end, they allow an upside-down dollhouse to rest in the V cutouts, with enough clearance for chimneys.

Anne Gerdes

Best sealer for new walls: The very best sealer for new dh walls is Gesso. It's used by artists to size and prepare canvas for painting. It's cheap, easy to use and self levels. I use it on everything!!

Judie St. Onge

Log Cabin Ceilings: For my log cabin ceilings, I just stained the ceilings the same stain as the inside wall logs and added beams. The beams are a great way to hide wiring, too.

Carole Pierce

Painting ceilings: When I start a kit, the first thing I do, before I even punch out the pieces, is paint the 'wrong' side with a coat of flat white paint. This helps me tell 'up' from 'down' and 'inside' from 'outside' and also provides a base for wallpapering later.

Dani

Painting Ceilings of already together dollhouses:Find a big corrugated cardboard carton. Cut a V shape out of each end. Put your dollhouse UPSIDE DOWN on the carton with the rooftop in the V you cut. Then you can see what you're doing to paint your ceilings and not break your neck trying to look up at the ceiling.

Dottie

WHY SPECIAL WALLPAPER GLUE? The fungicide/mildewcide in some regular wallpaper pastes, will cause the copper tape, brass brads/eyelets to turn black (this is corrosion - cupric oxide as I recall). Under a light colored paper, the black does cause shadows to appear.

Most regular wallpaper paste will cause the paper to stretch when wet and then to shrink when it dries out again. Don't forget to allow for this. YES paste doesn't cause the stretch/shrink. Do NOT dilute the YES paste with water (or anything else) regardless of what some authorities say. This causes the paper to stretch and become weaker.

YES paste has no lumps to worry about. When you apply the YES paste, use something like an old credit card or auto body filler spreader. Leave just enough paste on the paper to make it look shiney. Use a CLEAN spreader to smooth the paper onto the walls.

If your walls are made of very porous wood (like luan) it is best to seal the walls first. I recommend using shellac, diluted with 5 parts alcohol to 1 shellac (don't use a good Scotch, just plain old denatured). If your house is made of domestic birch, sealing isn't necessary but it won't hurt anything if you really want to do it.

Tom

Oil stain on the floor: If you want the floor of your garage to look grungy, take a toothbrush and dip the tips of the bristles in paint and splatter a bit here and there. For an oil stain, take some real car oil (couple of drops will do) and smear it around in the middle of the floor, and sprinkle some dust in it (oil stains usually either look dirty or have cat litter sprinkled on them).

Karen Isaacson

Thatch: There are lots of ideas for thatch, but one I saw (and plan to use on my English pub) is upholstery fringe, cut in half the long way down the middle and glued on. I think I'll dye it first, probably a dull gray, then cut it in half and then glue it on to the roof in rows. The stuff was not very expensive, and it seems like it would be easier to use than a lot of other materials...and done up, it looked very 'thatchy'.

Karen Isaacson

Thatch: There are a lot of different things that can be used for thatch, depending on the look you want. I tried one once with broom straw and didn't like it - too neat. Ended up doing that house with raffia, which gave it the look I wanted. I have known some people to use unraveled hemp rope, and I believe some sort of gourd product.

Beth

Thatch: I once made a 1/2" cottage in a Bill Lankford workshop. For the thatch, we slopped heavy spackling compound onto the wood roof (which we dampened first) and let it dry slightly. We combed the compound with a large-tined comb, pulling on it so that it curved out raggedly over, then slightly under the eaves and humped up over the windows and doorway. For color we used different splotches of yellow-gold-brown-gray, then drizzled a dirty-water wash over it all. Worked great, and the cottage looks like Snow White should walk out the door any minute.

Wanna

For a great looking cement side walk - use spackle (light weight)- you can add some gray paint to color it if you want or add this later. Spread an even layer on your planned area. Take a 1/4" wide piece of wood and press it lightly every so many inches to provide your separately "poured" cement sections. Then take your exacto and draw a line in the middle of that. You can make wonderful cracks in corners- add initials - what ever you would like. To darken the sidewalk (but be very careful about this) you can use a dirty water wash on it. Remember though it is impossible to make it light again! (which is why I opt to color the spackle in the beginning!).

Renee