Wrapping Paper as Wallpaper:I used wrapping paper and it worked great. I used white Elmer's glue and applied it to the wall with a small paint brush very smoothly. Laying the paper on the glue was the tricky part but it smoothed out nicely.

Toni J

White-on-White Room: You have picked one of the loveliest looks; a breaking-the-rule look! You'll be considering almost 100% one color, for one thing; wouldn't the Greeks, with their Golden Mean, be freaking! You really don't have to worry about getting the wrong shades of whites, creams, beiges, and so forth. If you just keep all of them closer to the white, light look, it won't look messy or cluttered. Use the whitest ones you pick as the comparison standard; then you can reject any others you might try by putting them next to the white one....based on whether or not being next to the whitest makes the others look dirty or tired. See, many fabrics and colors look marvelous on their own, but when put in close proximity to others don't really work. This is particularly true of whites and yellows. You'll be able to use the Golden Mean principle here by changing it to textures, since you aren't using that principle in the area of color. I mean, you can go wild with textures in the whites without creating a too-busy look. Laces, Battenberg, swiss polka-dot white on whites, white on white stripes; you can have a ball without putting a single foot wrong. It will be spectacular. The drama created by knowing where to break a rule is always refreshing! The textures also are demonstrated in the draping of everything; if everything is smoothed down, you lose some of the interest. If you recall those pictures you mentioned, there is an immense amount of fabric used in order to create dimension through draping. Lots of folds, lots of hanging ripples from layering; lots of pillows with rich and diverse fabrics and trims to create more dimension....that'll do it. You might want to consider putting whites almost everywhere; floor coverings, paint or fabric-covered walls, as well as the curtains, bed coverings, canopies if any; pillows, upholstery.....and then, throw one surprise in a pillow, or a drapery ribbon trim; cherry red, pale lavender....any introduction of an unexpected color in a tiny proportion just caps off the delight.

Elizabeth Baxter, Ann Arbor

Victorian Decorating: for your dh or your real house, here's a catalog for you. It's called "Around the Corner Fine Art" . . . 30 pages of beautiful Victorian pictures . . . I plan on framing some of them for my dh . . . someday. It can be ordered at 1-800-999-3083. The cover says "five dollars", but I know the friend I got it from didn't pay for it, she somehow got on their mailing list.

Jude

Wrapping Paper as Wallpaper: I have done it successfully. I didn't use wallpaper glue or YES glue. I simply used a glue stick. And it's really quite lovely.

Tonya

White-On-White Room: Victoria magazine put out a book called, At Home With White that has wonderful pictures of white-on-white decorating. Their website is http://victoria.women.com/vict/misc/80subs11.htm When decorating in neutrals such as white, creams and beige, remember the old decorator's adage, "A little black in every room." You do need something dark to anchor the room or it looks and feels too fluffy, like it's going to float away from you. Green plants are your best bet - they add life, the dark color and some texture. Or you could have dark hardwood floors, black lampshades, a few brown leather books, some wooden boxes, that sort of thing. The second necessity is texture to prevent the room from looking bland. Wicker baskets, faux fur, lace. Fabrics with an open or coarse weave make great mini throws to drape over chairs and sofas. Consider painting your walls with a 3-colour wash, such as white on cream on beige.

Pat M. in Aurora, On

Wrapping Paper as Wallpaper: As mini wall paper is difficult and expensive to obtain here we often use wrapping paper in room boxes etc. I apply glue (wood glue or glue stick) to cardboard templates and then stick them in place in the room box. This has the advantage of your being able to paper on a flat surface and also put it under a weight until dry to prevent distortion. And you can change your mind if you don't like it. I only once applied it direct to the wooden walls and had the same problem you did, took hours to get it off again.

Roberta, Durban, South Africa

White on White: A while back I saw a wonderful decorating show on one of those home shows on TV. The room was very small. To add texture and interest to the room the walls were covered in a soft pleated white fabric floor to ceiling and stapled down. The Bed was a dark wood four poster everything else in the room was in shades of white. The room was gorgeous when completed, it was the wall treatment that made the difference. The room was only big enough to hold the bed and a small dresser.

Gail in Arizona

White on White: You could paint your walls flat white then with masking tape (the width of the stripe you want) mask off the stripes you want to remain flat white. When you are all done masking - paint the visible stripes with a glossy white.

Marsha, Newark, CA

"The Eye and Architectural Features" In studies of how the eye works in aesthetics, it helps explain why some rooms work and satisfy the eye and others are exhausting to the eye, and feel too cluttered.

It turns out, our eyes like two things; to roam and flit from thing to thing, and they also like to come to a rest before moving on. So, that explains why the best rooms have one prominent architectural feature. Examples; fireplaces, large, sculptured fancy-trim windows, an important painting, rafters, or in furniture; an armoire, .....you get the idea. That's where the eye rests. If a room has too many of those stand-out architectural features, the eye can't rest; it is pulled repeatedly from feature to feature to feature; flitting, flitting and thus, the room is experienced as cluttered.

The Victorian period broke this rule all the time; filling rooms with hundreds of eye-catching features; millions of drapings on the windows; lamps with beads and curlicues, fireplaces, fireplace screens, Orientals upon Orientals on the floors, heavily carved and massive furniture and hundreds of gew-gaws on every layered surface. Now, they went 70% or more in the other direction toward movement and dimension and texture and pattern. The best ones looked great, but made everyone itchy to try and live in.....because of the eye's need to rest.

Take a look at the Thorne rooms; a lot of why they work, is she knew when to stop. She left a lot of space between beautiful objects so that the eye could roam with room to digest each part before another hove into view.

So, if you look at a room you are working on, start with the architectural feature and build from there. For instance, if you have a fireplace, you don't need also to have lots of trim; chair rail, superimposed framing, cupboards, bookcases, heavily framed windows with mullions, chandeliers with medallions....stop, already!

A good guiding principle, particularly the scale we're working in, is Less Is More. It kills me to have to stop putting beautiful stuff in anything I'm working on; I assume you are like me; I have to tie myself down to keep from creating overkill!

This eye thing applies to numbers of patterns in one room; amount of furniture in one room....allow your eye to tell you what feels right. It will tell you and so will looking at pictures in the great design magazines; House Beautiful, Art and Architecture. And, as you get better at trusting yourself, you will be able to pick up other magazines, as you wait in line at the grocery store; Woman's Day, House and Garden, you know the kind of thing, and you will start to see why many of their rooms don't work!

Elizabeth, Ann Arbor

Color Schemes: When you choose a color scheme, consider two things: the color schemes you're using inside the house (bright tropical colors with a pastel "painted lady" exterior would look odd) and the color schemes of the room where the house will be displayed once completed. Again, if your home is pastel, you don't want a red, blue and yellow house! Aside from that, whoever suggested the painted lady book was right. That will give you great ideas; I think there are actually 3 books in all with similar titles available at library.

Loretta.Sniarowski

Blank Space: I've noticed that many of us tend to have too much blank wall space in our rooms and on our houses. The empty space isn't in pleasing proportion with the "filled" space. In other words, a house often has large expanses of stucco wall between the windows. Inside walls often have large expanses of wallpaper and then one small picture.

When I look at a Lawbre house or a Brooke Tucker roombox, for instance, they have made sure that any large expanse is broken up with an architectural element: a wall angle, or alcove, or molding, etc. So that the proportions look right, and it doesn't look so "plain". Does this make sense?

Is there a design element or principle that would help explain it? A rule of thumb that would help us balance "busy" with "blank"?

Debra in CA

Exceptions to the rule: Kitchens, where a lot of work goes on; stores, where lots of imagined traffic occurs and things are bought, are two of the places where the 'clutter' I talked about so cavalierly, is not only acceptable, but preferable, to show us, the observers, that life is going on. With minis, the observer is supposed to be drawn in to something that feels like a tiny life really lives there and does things!

Kitchens are usually active, and if they are too neat, it is only for a picture in a magazine, right? I mean, my kitchen looks good if there are only 100 things out on the counters! If the kitchen police were to enter my house on a usual day and take one look at my trashed-out kitchen full of the stuff that people have to use, they would usually take me away! Kitchens are meant to feel lively and used, so the look will always be a bit more filled with wonderful things to look at!

If the goodies of a kitchen that you want to show, could be artfully arranged on a center worktable and a few of the counters with a bit of clean space, you are fine and dandy. See, in a kitchen, you can go the exact opposite direction from lots of empty space and few items, and not be creating an uncomfortable site.

As you said, your eye is telling you that it's pleasing; go with your instincts.

I would even leave cupboard doors open to show cool items inside the cupboard. Knowing me, I would probably even have some dishes still in the sink! The ones that take the lively, active look too far, also have too much for the eye to have to deal with besides cool items like food, dishes, dishrags, pots and pans.....if there are also, curtains with many folds and patterns, wallpaper of a strong pattern, cupboards with trim, strong paint colors, rugs, cushions for the chairs.....then you may want to consider how little rest-space for the old eyes you need to clear.

Thanks for pointing out an exception to the rule; that's the fun part; how do you learn when to break the rules and get away with a great and original look?

Elizabeth, Ann Arbor

Color Schemes: I am an interior consultant... I know color ... Do you have a Home Depot where you are or a K- Mart? They have paint color sections for exterior. I would start with what you favorite color is, or what color you have your home decorated in, so it can be set out and will go with your homes color scheme. The paint samples have several different color values. I would pick the one that is boldest for the from door. Make it stand out. Once you have picked your color, I would try to match it to craft paint/paints. you can always use white to tone down or lighten the paint or use black to darken I would experiment. Also I would seal the wood before painting and then paint the wood white so you will have true color on your house. Finally take a Sunday drive and look at houses that are similar in design and see how they have been done.

Peaches From Daytona Beach FL

Cluttered Rooms: To add to the discussion of clutter in mini rooms-even if there is clutter there is a fine line between reality and art. It is easy to cross that line. The clutter should follow the traditional elements and principles of design because, as Richard Simms has so truly stated, "We are not creating little things, we are creating art."

As some members have pointed out, Brooke's rooms are very attractive. I might add that Ray Whitledge's rooms are also attractive. Nicole Walton-Marble and Judee Williamson's rooms are lovely too. All of these rooms include a lot of "stuff" but they are artfully arranged using the elements and principles of design. Whether these people do it instinctively, or they have learned it, is not important. They do it.

There has to be unity using line, colour, space, rhythm and texture. A mini room or a mini house should be a work of art. If we think of art as poetry it is easier to understand the concept. In poetry, the form and the negative space are as important as the words. So it must be with a mini room.

Someone pointed out that so often there are large blank spaces in mini rooms and houses, but not in Brooke's. An element placed just so in the space draws our attention to a line which we follow to the next element. Colour can add to this. For instance, a colour has to be repeated from one floor to another, not necessarily in the same intensity nor amount. In any great painting a colour or tone which is in the main part of the picture will be repeated somewhere. That is unity.

June Simpson

More Clutter: In regards to keeping your rooms simple, and not overcrowded. I am a room clutterer. I hate it in my own home, but I love it in miniature. I have a lot of fun with something that looks really lived in. Lots of chaos and unfinished business. I never put people in because I want my rooms to look like the occupant just dropped everything and went on to something else. I try to start out with dignity, and keep it all in scale, but it never lasts. Most of my occupants are compulsive shoppers, and have to have everything. There's always several "stories" going on at once. I'm just incorrigible....LOL. To make matters worse my occupants aren't very good at keeping things bright and shiny. They have nicked furniture, the exteriors always need re-painting, and there's always lots of dogs and cats underfoot. Is there any hope for me?

Carol Wagner

Ceilings: Have been reading about finishing a ceiling.. paint stores sell white paint just for ceilings and they always put a touch of black (only a touch) in the paint it helps reduce glare.

Peaches From Daytona Beach FL

Size Vs Scale: I have made miniatures that were exactly copied to scale from real life objects, and then had people complain that they looked "too big" in their room. It seems as though a common problem is that many people have dollhouses that have many tiny rooms, so when you put your appropriately scaled mini in the room, it almost looks too big, when really it is that the room is too small! If we built dollhouses with the measurements of our own modern homes, the dollhouses would be much larger than we might want to display.

My personal solution (Elizabeth says the Thorne rooms use this... and I thought I thought it up?!) is to make the rooms larger than normal, OR have much less stuff than I would like to have. Or, sometimes I build something a fraction smaller than it should be.... but only a tiny bit.

I built a farmhouse once that had nice large rooms and it was so big I had to get rid of it- I didn't have space for it! Now I build box rooms that average 22" long x 10" deep x 10" high. I can display stuff with more of a feeling of spaciousness (although some are still crowded because I hate to stop.)

Bonnie in Tucson

Miniature Scale: I have really been enjoying the discussions about proper scale in mini. Just to add my own 2 cents: I built custom kitchen cabinets out of cherry wood for my dollhouse (drawing on my real life experience as a kitchen designer). Funny how a cabinet built 1" deep which would be the same as 12" in life size, looks too big. Fortunately, I hadn't put the backs on the cabinets, so I was able to power sand them down to under 1". Same problem with using 3/16" stock ... all the wood had to be planed so it looked right to the eye.

Jan Harris

Size/Scale: Bonnie in Tucson says that in order to balance size & scale she sometimes makes rooms larger. I used this solution too when making a RGT 1/2" scale house. Instead of making the six tiny rooms suggested, I made just four rooms. Architectural details such as wainscoting, a built in cupboard and paneled fireplace wall added interest without clutter so I needed far less furniture. With four rooms, each piece of furniture could be "showcased" with ample room around it to focus attention on it yet the sizes of the rooms were still in the realm of the possible. Because I was working in 1/2" scale, I stayed away from using very tiny objects. My rule of thumb is it's better to pick a larger real life object to create in 1/2" scale than a smaller one. I still have accessories, I just picked larger things to begin with. Instead of tiny glasses or utensils, I put a stoneware water cooler on a kitchen counter. It's in scale, but it takes up more visual space and has more presence than the glasses would have. A few larger objects are less "cluttery" and easier to "read" than lots of tiny things, especially in smaller scales. While filling rooms and shops with tons of stuff is fun, I find I can only look at such rooms for a short time without being visually overwhelmed and ultimately, turned off. That is why art galleries isolate what they want you to consider by placing works on pedestals or easels. In the words of an old auctioneer I know who was selling a glass dome: "buy this dome, it makes a cheap doll look expensive". True, true. The same principle is at work here. Of course, as Dennis Miller says, "that's just my opinion, I could be wrong".

Darlene on L.I.

Size vs Scale: I think a lot of people would be surprised if they ever realized how small their dollhouses would be life size. The first floor of my Heritage would fit neatly into my (very) small apartment. I have a graphic of it at the bottom of: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/1832/heritage/photo8.htm

Jim Collins