How to Shingle a Dollhouse

I painted faux shingles on the $5 dollhouse, but if you want to put real shingles on your dollhouse you must see the Shingling Guide at More Minis.   Great ideas for getting it right on the first try!

Painted Landscaping

Onlay attached to right side

The painted Masonite cutout (onlay) to represent landscaping is done and attached to house!   Not the world's greatest paint job... (I'm running short on time to finish!! ....*G*....no time to fuss!)....but it's suppose to be cute and cartoon-y anyway, not realistic.    The idea was to add some bright colors and things that the kids would enjoy looking at....but still keep it simple.    (See previous post to see steps taken to cutout before painting.)

Onlay glued to left side

The birdhouses are added on as an additional layer of wood for a little dimension.   I also added some window shutters.   Another excuse for adding spots of color.  Nothing complicated about the shutters, just an easy-to-make rectangle of thin wood with a painted heart to dress it up.

That pretty well finishes up what I plan to do with exterior!

Decorating With Shrubs and Trees

For this low-cost, kid-friendly dollhouse, I decided to paint shrubs, trees and other plantings onto side of house instead of using any easily damaged and potentially unsafe materials.   To make painting easier on myself (and also give it a little dimension), I created an "onlay" for the shrubs out of some scrap Masonite.

Landscaping started out looking like this:

Using some basic tole painting techniques....we have created a nice row of trees and shrubs to apply to each side of the house.  Basecoat with medium foliage green.  Imagine some shrub shapes and, using a stippling motion,  highlight one side of with a light foliage green and the other side with a deep green.   I made no attempt at realistic shapes......just ellipses...puffy ball shapes!

This decorative onlay is not quite done.   I plan on adding some flowers and birdhouses for added color.  I promise I will show you the finished photos soon.  I also plan on adding some shutters to the windows to dress things up a bit more!   The black and white checks are there just because I like checks and it also adds a little whimsey.  ;-) 

Tip:   Notice that the red color of the house is painted between the branches of the tree.   That makes cutting out the onlay shape a whole bunch easier!  No tiny branches to cut!   Once it's applied to house, you'll never notice!

Faux-painted Dollhouse Shingles

Gosh!   I can't believe a week has gone by already and I haven't updated the tale of the roof re-do on the dollhouse!  I've been so busy working on the house, I just haven't had time to talk about it!   Sorry! ;-)

If you've been following along from the start, you know that my first attempt at applying a printable pattern of asphalt shingles ran into a number of problems (mostly with printing).    After a few frustrating attempts I tore the glued on paper "roofing" off and started over by painting the roof a basecoat of medium brown.   This has to be a kid-friendly roof treatment...so, no shingles (until child gets older).  The plan is to paint some faux asphalt shingles for the dollhouse!

New Plan for Roof

Because I had so much trouble with the printables for this roof (see previous post), I soaked all the paper and removed it.   After a bit of glue removal, it's ready to start over.   btw...Removing the printable paper and glue wasn't too bad a job at all...went fairly easy.    But now I've painted the roof a medium brown as a basecoat for the new painted faux-shingles!    I'll share some step-by-step photos of the faux painting next!

There's a lot of inexpensive, recycled things that can be used to shingle a dollhouse, but this dollhouse is being designed for a child, so I don't want to use anything that can break (sharp edges) or fall off.   I've seen shingles made of sandpaper, egg carton cardboard, real shingles (cut to size), pine cone "tiles" ....many other things.   Leave a comment if you have a shingle idea to add to list!

Roofing is Not Going Well

Printable shingle pattern, partially finished.

One thing after another went wrong when printing out the pattern for the printable roof shingles.   It had nothing to do with pattern.   First thing that happened is I ran out of ink in printer!!    Not completely out, but ink was low enough that when I printed 3 more sheets of the shingle pattern, it came out a noticeably different color than the sheets that are already glued to roof..  Well, that just won't do!

I live in a small town and can't buy any ink here...so it's a trip into the city or wait for mail order.   So I went into city and got more ink.   I also bought some more matte spray to coat the printed pages.

That went wrong too.    I got more sheets of the shingle pattern printed out OK.    Sprayed them with a sealer  so ink wouldn't run....let that dry.   Well, I must have been using wrong stuff, because, when the finish dried, it wasn't completely clear.    It left a whitish, powdery-looking residue.  Very noticeable.  

At that point I lost my patience!     I had already used up a lot of ink printing out a lot of pages and didn't want to experiment any more!    My word of advice!   Do some test prints.   Make sure you have plenty of ink in printer....and spray a sample with your clear coat/sealer spray before using it on your final product.  

My decision was to START OVER and paint faux roof shingles instead of using printables for roofing.   I haven't given up on using printables, I just won't use them on the roof.    So guess what the next step is, yep!  I have to pull off the shingles I've already glued on.   That may take a while!!!

Removing printed shingles from roof!

Tip:   If you have to do this....wet the paper well.  It will remove easier.  If you have some fabric softener, dilute it in water and try it.   It may soften glue faster.  (I had used diluted Elmer's White Glue as sort of a wallpaper paste.)

Roofing with Printables

Starting to cover roof with printed shingles

The roof of the $5 Dollhouse will be covered with 'asphalt shingles' from Jim's Printables.   You can find the full-size printable on this page.   Below is a sample of pattern.

A few printing tips:   

 Use good quality paper.   It doesn't have to be expensive photo paper but should be better than 'all purpose' paper.    Check your store, there's a few "in-between" quality papers available.

Exterior: Patch, Repair, Prime & Paint

Painting a coat of primer on your wood dollhouse is important for a number of reasons.      If it is a recycled dollhouse, it can cover a multitude of sins!  It will seal all the wood putty and patching that might be necessary and give you an even-colored basecoat to work from (instead of the multi-color charmer I started with!)   If it is a brand new dollhouse, from a kit or homemade, it seals the bare wood and makes the top coat of paint go on smoother.  

Any walls that will be wallpapered should be painted (primed) first but there are times when painting first won't be necessary, such as a roof that will be shingled.  In our case, we'll be printing out faux shingles to glue to the roof...and that is the same as wallpapering....so I've primed the roof along with every other square inch.

On the outside of the $5 dollhoouse there's a lot of splitting of the wood to repair before we can even start painting!!    Some serious wood patch was needed on one corner...but it came out OK.