DIY Miniature Dollhouse Tutorial

Hi there, it's Cass, and today we're building a miniature dollhouse. A dollhouse for a dollhouse. Let's jump right into it. For the base of the house, I'm using this quarter inch thick piece of wood. Measure a rectangle two and a half inches by one and three fourth inches. Cut that out. Then I use my X-Acto knife to score a bunch of straight lines on the surface of the wood. We're trying to achieve the look of hardwood floors. These cuts don't have to be too deep at all. Make a few cuts to mark the beginning and end of the hardwood plank. I use a mixture of brown paint and water to stain the surface of the wood, and it looks pretty good. Next, I grab a piece of masking tape and draw a one inch by half inch rectangle. This will mark the porch area of the house. Cut that out and add it to the bottom left corner of the base. Put this whole thing aside for now. Next, grab a jumbo popsicle stick, cut off the round end, and break off a two inch piece. Split that in half. Do this twice so you end up with four pieces. We're going to take three of them for now and save the fourth one for later. Draw two windows on each piece, one on the top and one on the bottom. Cut those windows out. Here are the three finished pieces. Grab a coffee stirrer to glue these three pieces to. Just use some wood glue to get a super strong bond. After you glue the first piece on, draw two lines away from that first piece. You're creating a trapezoid shape. Cut off the excess wood and glue on the other two pieces. You see how it's starting to form the shape of a three-sided bay window? That's exactly what we want. So the other fourth piece we kept from earlier, split that straight down the middle. Glue them to each side of the finished window piece. Grab another coffee stirrer and cut out a trapezoid. We're now working on the top of the window. Glue that to the top middle wall. Cut out two small rectangles from the coffee stirrer and add those right next to the trapezoid. Let's glue all of this to the base we made in the beginning. Add two drops of wood glue and position it on the bottom right corner of the base. Make sure those three walls jut out from the base. Now we're adding some walls around this house with some jumbo popsicle sticks. Here's a look with the first few walls up. Next, let's draw on the front doors and windows for both floors. These are just simple rectangle ones. Nothing too fancy. Not trying to impress anyone here. Cut those out. Make sure to save the cutouts from the doors. We'll be using these as the actual doors to glue on. Looking pretty good. Let's get the rest of the walls up. I cut out a window on the right side of the house just to let some extra light in. Let's add another floor for the balcony and an attic. Place a popsicle stick on the top of the bay windows and trace that shape. Cut that out and glue it in place. Keep doing that until the whole open top is covered. Now let's build a balcony on the second floor. Take that piece of tape on the porch and use that as a stencil for the balcony above the porch. Love how easy masking tape makes my life. Okay, back to the attic slash roof. Mark where the porch area ends and the bay windows start. Cut out a tiny strip. Glue that to the top of the house at an angle. I want it a little taller so I'm adding another half a popsicle stick. Then add some angle cut pieces for the side walls of the attic. Lastly, add a popsicle stick to the top to finish off the roof. For some railings, I'm using some toothpicks with the carved design at one end. Measure the height of the porch, cut that length out, and glue it in place. Cut off the fancy end of the toothpick and use those as posts for all the railings. Add them to wherever there is a corner. Then with the rest of the toothpick, cut off quarter inch pieces for the rest of the railings. Do this on the porch too. Before we keep going, let's add a nice entrance to the porch. With a jumbo popsicle stick, measure the height, draw a wide curved doorway, and cut that out. Glue it into place. Okay, let's finish the railings. For the handrails, we're using a coffee stirrer. Split it in half and use one to cover the posts. Now it's really coming together. Okay, I should have done this earlier, but let's cut out an entrance from the top balcony into the house. For the roof window, grab a coffee stirrer and line it up vertically against the roof. Trace the angle of the roof and cut out two triangles. Glue that to the roof. Draw out the shape of the window you want and cut that out as well. Make sure to cut an opening so it becomes a window frame. For the window glass, I'm using some plastic packaging. Trace the shape I need and cut that out. I glue it to the window frame and glue the whole thing into place. Again, I should have done this earlier, but let's cut out the window hole in the roof. Measure the length I need for the roof of this window and cut those pieces out. Glue it into place. Ah, that's all done. Let's put some stain on the areas we missed earlier and stain the floors of the attic. This floor extends out to the balcony, so make sure to cover that as well. While you're at it, stain the handrails and the balcony above the porch. Here's a look at the front and the inside. Now let's paint the interior walls and ceilings. I chose white, but you can use any color you like. See how I left a bare strip of wood unpainted? That's where I will glue in the second floor. For the actual second floor, I glued three jumbo popsicle sticks together and cut off the round ends. Cut off a length that will fit inside. Then trace the shape of the front of the house. Cut that out and stain one side. On the other side, add some small strips of wood to create the look of support beams. Stain those strips and paint the rest in white. Add glue to the edges and slide it into the house. Add white paint to cover the remaining bare areas. Also go ahead and paint the rails white too. For the sidings on the exterior of the house, I grabbed a handful of coffee stirrers and glued them on. Make sure to interlap each piece. To make my life easy, I used some shears to cut off all the excess wood. I want to paint this house a nice light teal blue, so I mixed some blue and white paint with just a tad of yellow. Paint that on. Luckily, I just needed one coat to completely cover the wood. For the roof shingles, I'm using coffee stirrers with round ends. Glue a bunch of them together. Cut that in half and then together again. Cut off a length that's just a little bit longer than the top of the roof. Glue that on. Glue on individual pieces for the front of the roof. It's a bit tricky to get around the window and the doors, so be patient. Next, I stained the roof in the same brown paint. Don't forget the roof of the window. Oh, and paint the window frame too. Remember those doors we saved all the way at the beginning of the video? Let's grab those. I'm painting the front door red because I personally like a pop of color. I cut out two pieces from a coffee stick and glued those on. This will add texture and detail to the boring flat door. Glue that to the door frame. I like to leave the door open just a little bit. For the doorknob, add a small dot of metallic silver paint. Grab another door and stain that brown. Glue that to the second floor's door frame. Okay, last door. This is for the attic. Paint the toothpick silver and glue that to the top of the door. Cut off the excess toothpick, sand the rough edge, and paint it silver. Glue that to the doorway. For the rest of the windows in the house, I'm using some more of that clear packaging. Here, I'm making a window frame with just some coffee stirrers. Paint that white and glue it on. Lastly, I'm making some porch steps. With the popsicle stick, I cut two strips. One thin piece and one twice as thick. Position the thin piece on top of the thick piece. Glue that to the house. Paint it white and you're done. Oh wait, one more step. Varnish the hardwood floors with some polyacrylic for a shiny finish. Add some tiny, tiny, tiny doll furniture and there you have it. A dollhouse for your dollhouse. It's 1 to 144 scale, so it's super small. I hope you guys liked this video. Make sure to give it a thumbs up if you did. I have two new videos up every single week, so hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. I'll see you next time. Bye!