Log Cabin Chinking: HBS sells logs made of pine that are perfect for facing a dollhouse shell.

When I put together a log cabin room box for the catalog, I made the chinking but cutting 1/4" strips of foam core. I painted them with ivory enamel paint, glued them with the foam facing out between the logs and then pressed them with the flat end of a cuticle stick. The foam compressed and the edges spread out unevenly and it had just the right look. My e-buddy, Pat Townsend, came up with a better idea: She used real caulk and squeezed it out into lines on wax paper and let it dry. She then was able to peel up the lines of caulk and press them between her logs. She said it looked great.

Sally Cook-Thomas

Chinking Log Cabins: Of course each region would use a slightly different mixture according to what is available at the site. Mostly it is a combination of clay or soil, grass or straw or even tree leaves and small twigs. Sometimes dung was added for stability.

The cabin I grew up in was chinked with clay mixed with straw. When that dried it was coated over with a plaster of pure clay. Then planks of bark were pushed into the wet clay so it acted like mortar to hold the bark in place. The bark acted like shingles keeping the rain (It rains a lot in Oregon) from washing away the chinking.

Chinking in miniature can be done using paintable caulk available from local hard ware or home improvement store. The caulk comes in several colors, Off white, brown, white etc. Cut the end of the tube off at an angle and as small as possible and still get a good stream of caulk. Run this between the logs. Smooth the caulk out with a wet finger then to add realism sprinkle with dirt or model rail road dirt. Some of the Eastern and even Southern log cabins were chinked with white (Lime) as was used in plaster.

Bill Hudson

Board Materials: Matte Board is a heavy card stock used to mat pictures. It is not meant to be painted or glued. Illustration board is a heavy card stock that is meant to be used for posters, signs or graphics and is meant to have paint, ink or glue on it. Foam core is two pieces of lighter card stock with a layer of foam between them. It can be painted but will warp easily. Gator board is a plaster type board with a fine foam between them and it used by museums and graphic artists for signs etc. It is meant to be painted, inked or glued so it will not warp easily. Obviously, illustration board and Gator board are best for building. Illustration board comes in two thickness’ and so does Gator board. The late Gail Vaughan used foam core which is cheaper than Gator board when she made a wall that was meant to look like adobe type building because she covered it with a layer of joint compound which strengthened it.

June in London Ontario Canada

Tudor Houses: To those looking for Tudor Houses try: http://www.dollshouse.com/acatalog/index.html

They have some wonderful kits. They're based in England, but ship internationally. Looks like a great resource for some unique style homes!

Wendy

Log Houses: Here in Canada, Manitoba to be more precise, a lot of our log cabins were built by Scandinavians. They used a substance called "bunkum" for insulation between the logs. It looks like horsehair, or the hair on coconuts, and comes in long, thick ropes wound in coils. It is the exact colour of peat moss. As the owner of a log cottage built on the lake in 1922, I was looking for some authentic bunkum and found it at a boat builder’s. They import it from Scandinavia; it has a distinctive, pleasant, rather tarry odor.

Jill Brooks

Warped roof: I have done some restoration work in the past, this method worked for me. Provided the warp isn't to extreme. Try nailing the roof down to a truly flat surface, so that it is once again "square". If you have a steam iron with a heavy steam output you can apply the steam to the roof. You will want to make sure you really saturate the wood of the roof (you will have to remove any paint or shingles first) with the steam. Leave it nailed down for at least a week or more. You could reapply the steam during that time to help reshape the roof. If you don't have an iron with a good output you could try renting a wallpaper steamer. I had good results using one.

Lloyd Cooper

Lincoln Logs (for Log Cabins): I was in the Toys R Us store this AM and they have oodles of Lincoln Logs in sets for all sizes of buildings.

Elise

TIP using fluid to mask off wood to get marquetry effects

This is American stuff named 'Incredible White Mask', also known as 'Liquid frisket'. It is a form of liquid or white mask (generic terms). Any art supply shop would carry this. It has a shelf life of

3 months and will change composition if it sits in the sun or freezes. It comes in a small container, the size of nail polish.

Deborah wanted me to veneer a table for her with a fancy cardinal points doodad on it. I said I wasn't competent enough to do it. But like a true miniaturist, she knew what she wanted, and had her moment of mini magic. She drew a circle in the middle of the table, masked off the rest of the table with 'Incredible White Mask' (IWM) and inked in the cardinal points symbol. Once dried, she took off the IWM, and IWM'd the symbol, staining the rest of the table. When she removed the IWM from the middle, it had absorbed some of the ink she had used to color the symbol, but this gave it a pleasant weathered look.

The thing that fascinated me was that there was no 'bleeding', of either ink or stain, to the other parts. Therefore one could make a backgammon table, make marquetry patterns on furniture, a chess/checkers board, make a parquetry floor... I once tried to do a real parquetry mini floor with veneer. It looked good, but the cost in blood, sweat and tears doesn't bear the telling.

Helen

Foamcore: You can probably use Foamcore to make a roombox as long as it's not too large and you are careful about preventing warping. If you apply a water-based product to one side, apply a water-based product to the other. Examples: paint both sides; or paint one side and use Tacky glue on the other. You don't have to do it at the same time, but don't wait too long or it will warp.

In addition to gluing the foamcore together, I would stick some straight pins in to hold the edges and maybe even tape the seams, then cover the outside with fabric or something to cover it all up.

Beth

Foamcore: I just finished teaching a class on building a two story English Tudor Cottage which was built from ½ inch foam core and turned out great no warping and a lot easier to work with than plywood. This is the first house that I've built using

½" Foamcore but it won't be the last. I will agree that the thinner 1/4" and 5/16" Foamcore does have a tendency to warp if not stiffened with beams or siding. When I built my Buttercup I glued 5/16" foam core on the outside to thicken the walls since it was a tab and slot house with very thin walls. So there it is, properly used it is a great building material but used improperly it can be a disaster.

Rik Pierce

Lightweight Garden Walls: Have you thought about constructing them from polystyrene? You could cut each individually or make grooves in the polystyrene to simulate a wall. Painted with a variety of greys or browns it could look quite realistic, yet remain really lightweight.

Diana in New Zealand

Lightweight Garden Walls: I haven't tried Crayola's Model Magic for very large items, but it certainly is light and it certainly is easy to work with, and paints or dyes well with magic markers. That MIGHT work for the wall, but I would suggest buying a small package to experiment with first. You can work out Fimo molds for bricks, or whatever, and then when you open the Model Magic, you stick a glob in the mold and pull it right out and let it start to dry while you are molding yet another piece. That would mean piecing the wall together. Or, you could press out a length/width of it and "stamp" your brick/mortor design on both sides of it (working relatively quickly.) I used some Model Magic when it first came out and it has held up well so far, and I have found it delightful to work with-but I still have issues with the unused portion drying out when not in use, despite all the suggestions I got from SS. Sometimes I am in a hurry and think I have it in an air tight container, but...NO...when I come back, there is this rubber ball.

Rose

Lightweight: I made an entire dilapidated camp site toilet block which had been condemned by the Federal Department of Health. It was designed to look like the standard toilet blocks that most of us use in desperation but would rather not. It looked like it was built from the grey Besser blocks (Americans would know Besser blocks as cinder blocks or cement blocks), with the cut-out pattern in the front walls, and solid Besser blocks on the other walls. I used EXPANDED POLYURATHANE (EP) to make the walls, base and cubicle walls. I managed to buy my EP from the fiberglass supplies joint down the road. EP can be cut with an exacto knife, carved with anything - even fingernails - it has a gritty texture a bit like sand but is very light and the texture is great for walls. It came in a hideous shade of 'pus' green but with a coat of gunmetal grey paint it came up a treat. It glues with hot glue but it does make a gritty dust before being sealed so you probably need to cut it OUTSIDE!

My toilet block had missing cubicle doors, rusted pipes and blocked toilets, sinks with water in them and paper towels clogging them up, overflowing waste bins and rubbish in the corners. The paper towels were all over the floor and there was some vomit on the floor in the corner. Not one cubicle had any toilet paper,(naturally). EP is used as a lightweight base to make fiberglass components, primarily being coated in sheet fiberglass and resin - it is a specialized material and will not be available at your local hardware store.

Trace

Cheap roombox - IKEA is selling unfinished frames for 3D pictures, named BAS. They come in two sizes

Small 6 ½ x 4 3/4 x 3 inches deep

Big 11 ½ x 7 ½ x 3 inches deep

The smaller one has a fixed glass front, and one fills the frame from the back. But the larger one has a sliding glass panel for the front. What this means is that if you buy 2 (they retail for £6 ea in GB), bash out the back of one, remove the glass from the other, and glue the empty back of one to the glassless front of the other - voila, your roombox is suddenly 6 inches deep, so you have a decent sized room box for £12. It also means that you can reinsert the glass panel you removed, so you could etch a ghost on it and/or stick things to the surface of the glass, giving great "depth" to the roombox. The potential is so great.

Helen of York, England

Speaker boxes: I used an old speaker for a scene last year, and liked it enough to buy more. The ones I've gotten so far are quite sturdy, but pose a couple of design challenges. They have reinforcing blocks on the inside corners that you have to fit your inner walls around, and if you want to keep the nice finished front edge, you pretty much have to put the glass in first, then assemble your scene from the back. If somebody has solved this one, I'd love to know how! (And if you figure out some cool stuff to do with the speaker innards, too. They're starting to pile up.)

Lee Menconi

My Fairy Hollow hollow log house... soon to become a troll house! It is a real hollowed log. I had a chain saw sculptor fellow do it. Bought the log from him too.

He cut away about 1/3 of it lengthwise, and then hollowed it to about 1" to 1-1/2" thick. He cut off about 10" or so off the length that I didn't need and shaped that piece into a cone (like sharpening a pencil.) Then he partially hollowed that too. Once re-attached and covered with moss, that became the house's roof, and upper floor ceiling.

He also cut away about 2" round from the other end. That was re-attached to become the main floor. I cut the windows and door, added the floors, etc. Photos here: http://gerdesdesign.com/hollow.htm

Anne Gerdes

Lighthouse Depot: Lighthouse Depot is a great gift store for lighthouse 'stuff'. A website http://www.lhdepot.com/ is available. They are physically located in Wells, Maine. If you are interested in lighthouses, there is a monthly magazine called Lighthouse Digest. Lots of stories on lighthouses from around the world. Also a listing of events if you are interested.

Emily Court