When you picture a dollhouse, you might be picturing a beautiful miniature house handcrafted with meticulous, painstaking detail and less a plaything than a delicate treasure.
Dollhouses like that are impressive, but there's also something to be said for a dollhouse that you can not only play with, but that can be made fairly easily and for shockingly little money!
A blogger from Berlin named Caroletta shared her method of creating a dollhouse using a cardboard box and a little time and skill. She says that as a child, she liked to play with paper dolls and often made houses for them in cardboard boxes.
Now with two children of her own, she decided to give her cardboard classic an upgrade, and turned a box into a Victorian townhouse with the help of some papier-mâché, wooden skewers, and paint.
And an added bonus of cardboard is that it's lightweight and durable enough for play, unlike this completely beautiful but impossibly fragile dollhouse made entirely of seashells. And if it's damaged at all, the simple materials make it a snap to fix.
Check out how she did it below, and see if this might be something you would try!
[H/T: BoredPanda, Art & Almonds]
First, she took an old cardboard box from Amazon and carefully took it apart.
She then carefully considered how she wanted her house to look, and settled on a classic Victorian townhouse with a bay window downstairs and dormer windows on top.
She cut off the flaps of the box and stood it up. Then she drew the windows and doors and cut them out.
The flaps and other scrap pieces were repurposed to form the bay window.
And, using masking tape for extra support, she attached the window to the house.
Inside, she constructed a floor so that the dolls could walk up the stairs and enter the building.
Now it was time for the upper story, complete with a spiral staircase connecting the floors!
Caroletta also reinforced the places where the cardboard joined together so that it would be sturdier and remain stable.
To make it smooth, she covered the whole thing with papier-mâché made from newspaper scraps.
She then coated it with a mixture of grout and glue to give it a stone or plaster look, and to even out any bumps that might have formed.
Finally, the house was painted with acrylics to give it color and character.
A finishing touch was the windows, which were made using cardboard for the frames and wooden skewers for the bars.
The door was made in the same way, but lined with cardboard to be solid and attached with hooks so that it can be opened and closed.
The finished product is really impressive! And completely made from simple, inexpensive, and recycled materials.
This is a dollhouse that is sure to see lots of love over the years. And you can take a cue from Caroletta and try making one of these yourself. And since it's a DIY, there's no limit to what you can do!
You can see more of Caroletta's crafts and artwork on her blog Art & Almonds, as well as on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.
And if you know someone who loves dollhouses but would like something a bit more durable, SHARE this adorable DIY with them!
