Concealing electrical wires

 

In her post of April the 8th Fiona (a Passion for Minatures) wrote about the wall plugs that appear to come with the coppertape system for creating electric light in a doll's house. I wrote a comment on this post about my coppertape system and how I agreed the rather ugly wall plugs had to be hidden behind tiny objects.

Wondering about this I remembered I initially had started out with a system of wires running under the floors in my Miniature house. But I did not like the bunch of threads hanging outside at the back of my house. 

So when I discovered the coppertape-system  I decided to use that instead, but later  I realised I really disliked the plugs.

Now I have ended up with a combination of both systems trying to have the best of both worlds for my Miniature House. I will show you in this post.

The advantage of the coppertape system is that you can hide it under the wallpaper and and with aid of a special Cir-Kit device, you  can plug lamps directly into the ceiling. Replacing the lamp is very easy in this way.

However  the drawback of the coppertape system is you need to make plugs in the walls. The electricity plugs are far too big and obvious. I try to hide them with some furniture or tiny accessories.

Sometimes, the Cirkit-device shown above can't be used for a ceiling lamp. This was the case with the lamp in my bathroom. I solved this problem by leading the wire up the room above, under the floor to the back of the attic where I had made a kind of fake corner.

The same trick I applied to the kitchen ceiling: the wires of the kitchen lamp end beneath the bath tub.  If you look well, you can still see the grooves I made initially for the wiresystem; in the back wall of my house are still tiny holes where I wanted to pull the wires through.  I can still do it if I choose to....

Then there was the problem of the hearths. I decided to hide the plugs behind them as you can see in the pictures below.  

I made the hearths out of paper, cardboard, wood and fabric, painting them afterwards.

Again the wire of the ceilinglamp in the livingroom runs under the floor of the room above and ends behind the hearth there.

At the attic I wanted to create a wall to put the red cupboard I made in front of it. This created the opportunity to hide the wire of the hanging lamp.

So far the secrets of the hidden electrical system in my Miniature House.

Pictureframes

Instead of buying frames for the pictures in my Miniature House, I tried to make them with the materials I already have at home. In this post I will show you how I did this.

I started to determine the measurements of the frames I needed for the paintings by using two
L-shaped pieces of paper.

I transferred  the measurements  to a piece of 1 mm cardboard and cut the rectangle  or  square  out.

Next I took some ribbon or lace and I glued this in a straight line on a piece of 1 mm cardboard. I used a kind of white glue that can be used as a primer for acrylic paintings. (in the store of Peter van Ginkel; Mowilith DM-2)

I made sure not only to glue the fabric on the cardboard but also brush the glue over it's surface. In this way I could avoid the fabric getting fringed later in the process.

When the glue had completely dried, I cut the fabric. In the picture below you can see that I made the glued on ribbon  a little less wide by cutting a long strip off. I did not want  the frame to be too big and heavy around the painting.

When the ribbon was as broad as I wanted it to be, I started  cutting it fit around my painting, using the template I made.  You can see this in the pictures below.

On  the frame, that was now created on the cardboard, I applied a  coat of paint.

I glued the coloured frame onto the painting itself and cut it all out again. I applied a final layer of paint to conceal the edge of the painting underneath.

And  below you can see the results;

A Give-Away from the mini art gallery

I would like to give away a miniature painting. I made them especially for this Give-Away, trying to take into acount the general taste I gather from what I see on most  blogs.

I know love of art is often  a matter of personal taste and therefore can't be disputed. But I do hope most of you can find a picture that suits your taste and would fit in your own doll's house style.

All paintings are made with high quality acrylics and finished with a matt varnish, so I suppose the colours won't fade (but never expose them to the burning sunlight anyway). Some paintings are made on real canvas, others on primed cardboard.



no. 2
2.7 cm x 3.5 cm

No 8
2.1 cm x 2.5 cm

No 14
3.3 cm x 4.2 cm

No. 7
3 cm x 3 cm

No 5
2.5 x 3.5 cm



No 11
3.8 x 2.5 cm

No.1
2.5 x 3.3 cm

No 13
4.3 x 3.5 cm

No. 6
2.1 x 1.6 cm

No 12
2.2 x 3 cm

Paintings

 I have two passions; one is building my Miniature House and the other one is painting and drawing. Today I thought; "let's combine both  worlds; I'll paint something for my minihouse".  The pictures beneath show my working process.

As you can see I can almost completely change the picture while working on it....I let myself be surprised :D       

Finally, I chose the picture in the middle above to make a frame around it  and put it in the attic of my Miniature House.

 

My way of making a mattrass

In the picture above you can see a mattrass I made for a bed in the attic of my Miniature House.

I learned this way of making a mattrass from a Dutch doll's house magazine (Poppenhuizen&Miniaturen, nr. 46, april/may  2000). I have seen several tutorials about making a mattrass on Blogspot by now, but this is the way I am used to doing it and I will show you in this post.

I start out by cutting a rectangle out of foam (2 cm thickness) .

The measurements of this rectangle are 7.3 by 14.1 cm.

Next I take a piece of thin cotton and iron on some non woven interfacing fabric (in dutch: vlieseline).

By using self made templates I drew the outlines of  3 parts of the matrass on this interfacing fabric:

A: 7.8 x 14.6 cm

B and C: both 7.8 x 8.2 cm

As you can see in the picture, I also cut a long strip (56 cm length and 2.6  cm width) out of the cotton.
 This is part D. Part D  will later be sewn between part A and part B/C.


The next picture shows that after cutting out part B,
I folded about 1 cm back and stitched it to prevent it from flipping back.

I then laid parts B and C next to part A and made the outlines match.
With some tape I temporarily attached B an C together,
making sure part B was the upper part and lying on top of C.

I used a self-made template to mark on part A all spots where the buttons will be attached

after the mattrass is stitched and filled with the foam.

 I then carefully stitched part D onto part A,
the stiches very close to the edge of the fabric (approximately 2 mm away from it).
The right sides of the cotton of part A and D are facing each other while stitching.
I made both ends of part D fit together nicely.

Finally, part B/C was stiched to D/A but again I made sure that the right side of the cotton was turned inside!

After that, I turned the fabric inside out, which means the smooth and beautiful side of the fabric is the outside of the mattrass cover now. I carefully removed the tape that held part B and C together.
By using some pins I stiched again about 2 mm away from the edges, all around.
I did this on both sides of the cover.

Next  I put the foam mattrass into the cotton cover,  using the gap between part C and D.

 Last step;  the buttoning......

And this is the final result!