Winter in a bubble, or miniature hell

You guys know I'm no stranger to extreme miniature crafts. I came across this dollhouse kit a while ago and I thought it was too cute to pass! I just assembled it recently and thought I'd share the experience. I wasn't into dollhouses... but this is no boring 1:12th scale, it's a tiny winter scene in a snow globe, with furniture and everything. How perfect is that?



I forgot to take pictures of the kit before I started working on it, so here are some seller pictures first to show you what I'm talking about:

This picture did it for me!

There's also a different colour version that is inexplicably rarer and more expensive. The interior is identicaly furnished, only the floor, stairs and railing being a different colour.

Both kits are easy to find on Aliexpress, Amazon and other shops. I bought mine from here. The kit comes with almost everything needed to assemble the pictured miniature, including the glass display, colourful instructions (in Chinese), printables, sandpaper, electronics for the lighting and sticker tape. My set even had batteries and glue!

As I said, I was going to take "before" pictures but luckily I discovered the good people from Youtube already took care of everything. Please show some love to Christine, who assembled this exact kit by the book and filmed it from beginning to end! She makes it look so easy!

One thing she got wrong is the scale. It isn't written anywhere on the box, but the house looks smaller than a dollhouse for my 1:6th dolls, so simple math tells me it's at least 1:72.

The instructions are illustrated and pretty straightforward. All the details are labelled, just like in human furniture kits. I didn't have to translate anything or rewatch the video before starting (in retrospect, I should have). The only difficulty is the sheer scale of the project, it's insanely tiny. Whenever I was telling people about this kit, I mentioned that a seed bead represents a flower pot in this house. It's not even a jumbo seed bead, just a regular size 11-12.

This is my finished fireplace with the flower and a lamp. I took some decorating liberties. On the right you can see the beads I was supposed to use - green for the pot and red for the shade. I also used a piece of the provided moss instead of the paper printable for the flower. You can get a glimpse of the instruction here.

Actually, the first item I made was the book.

I lost it about 20 times before I photographed it finished. This is when I began questioning my decision to buy the kit.

Here it is with the door and some house pieces:

I personalized this kit wherever possible. First, I gathered the details I wanted to repaint. Ignore the blue walls, they are for colour match:

The white triangle had a little chip

I had to sand the stairs because they had a really wavy surface. I made the top of the steps lighter than the rest to give the stair more volume. The whole endeavour took more time than I thought, but finally I was pleased that everything matched.

Then I changed the curtains. The top ribbon is from the kit, the bottom one is mine.

As I started gluing the walls together, I made an unpleasant discovery. Many pieces required sanding the edge at an angle. That includes a few walls and some of the roof pieces.

See what I mean? But that wasn't nearly enough!
To make matters worse, the walls are made of very thin wood and are very fragile.

Now this is more like it

 No matter how smooth and even I tried to make it, something just wouldn't fit.

I swallowed my perfectionism and moved on. After completing the main structure, it's time to add the three LED bulbs that light the house from the inside. They wouldn't stick with anything! At this point I got my superglue. Really hate the fumes and white residue, but there was no way I could continue with either PVA, E-6000 or other transparent glues I had on hand. If you have glue type suggestions, I'll gladly take them! Two more dollhouse kits are on the way (they are a lot bigger though, I've learned my lesson).

All the cracks make me want to cry.

More sanding on the outside, and more nasty cracks to touch up:

By the way, I tested all the bulbs before using them to make sure they were working. After assembling the house I connected the battery pack and sound sensor. The lights switch on and off from loud bangs. The wires were already prepared, all I had to do was pull the coating and bundle them together.

While the house was drying, I started making the furniture. They gave me a pink and a green piece of fabric. I liked the pink one more and decided to use as much of it as possible. This is the armchair:

I couldn't trim it neatly because of the size, so I used a tiny file to rub the edges away. The pattern was supposed to be centered :/

This is the whole armchair:

I went ahead and made all the soft furniture with the pink fabric and it was more than enough. The bed didn't strike me as a double size, I made a single pillow for it (plus they are super fussy).

I only used the green fabric for the kitchen carpet. I made the kitchen table with "my" lace as well.

I used some red lining fabric for the chairs:

I was going to repaint all the gold stuff bronze or silver, but after the book gluing torture I decided it was not worth the trouble.

I only changed almost all the provided beads because they were either plastic or ugly. Also got some neater ball chain.

I used their ball chain for the bedroom lights, but I replaced the things that look like shrunken bloody cotton buds with glass drop beads.

I used 2mm crystals for both desk lamps and three 3mm instead of two 4mm bicones for the kitchen.

I used the kit bead for the middle of the chandelier because mine didn't have a large enough hole for five wires. I brightened the rest though with transparent beads. In the picture above you can see I'm supposed to use pieces of the ball chain on the lower swirls. Instead, I gathered clear seed beads on the gold part of a metallic rainbow thread (because I don't have all gold). I used either glue or nail polish under the last bead in each dangle to secure it.

This is the finished chandelier before I cut off the excess thread:

All my lamps. I'm quite pleased with them.

The trees are green paper cones with some dried moss on top. The one that goes inside is decorated with a red topper and a coil of gold wire.

I switched my own, smaller and transparent seed bead and used my rainbow thread as the tinsel.

Finally, I dabbed some glue and sprinkled caviar beads as globes. This is really hard to photograph, my camera decided to focus on the caviar beads. They are smaller than 1 mm. I picked two gold ones for the wardrobe handle and the doorknob.

The last accessory for the interior is a couple of paintings. I cut them out, but it was impossible to make the frame the exact size. I corrected my mistake and after dousing them in shiny top coat (for nails), I cut them out already framed.

I was anxious to see how some of these items would look inside. Half an hour later...

The outside of the house took me a few days. I covered the rest of the trees with several coats of the moss because I couldn't cover bald patches with globes this time. I also noticed a wreath on the door in the product photos that was missing from the instructions. I found a curly bit of moss and glued it closed, then added a few caviar beads.

There's a snow covered tree in the front yard, it looks really yellow. By the way, the fake snow is kind of yellow too, but not to this extent. Here's the tree on white office paper.

I dabbed white and pearl paint and white flocking on it. Then I did the same with the evergreens, because I need consistency. The flocking reminds me of mould, somehow I thought it would look better.

Here are all my finished trees:

There's a snowman at the back of the house. It's made of two ivory pearl beads and some printable accessories.

The red rectangle contains a scarf and hat. Above you can see the paintings, below is the book and the green part has the trees. The black dots I'm pointing at are the snowman's eyes. Excuse me, am I supposed to cut those out? How about...

Interestingly enough, Christine (from the video) actually cut them! I don't have this patience, I just used black paint. Thinking back, caviar beads would have been a better choice because I flocked the yellowish snowman first and the paint bled a little. I used some embroidery floss for the scarf (red), a nose (orange) and arms (brown). The scarf is a whole piece while the nose and arms are separate threads hardened with nail polish.

I also used brown thread to make twigs for the fireplace, which aren't visible and I have no separate photo of them. Oops.
I painted the hat to match the scarf. This is my finished snowman:

I was about to start putting everything in the globe when I remembered some dried plants I hadn't used. Sure enough, when I looked at the product photos I noticed pieces of them glued along the fence. I then found that part in the instructions. Maaaan...

That took forever! They didn't want to stick where I put them, I just kept supergluing my fingers. To think I almost did my nails earlier that day! That would have been a waste.

I cut out the cardboard base and battery compartment and filled the first portion of snow. Afterwards, I cut a piece of paper about the size of the house floor and started dry-fitting, then gluing the yard elements around it.

The white tree was incredibly stubborn for some reason. Even with superglue, I had to get in there and hold it firmly while it stuck. It doesn't help that my hands are extremely shaky. There was visible sweat on the ceiling of the ball when I was done with the tree.

Then I ran into another problem. The house wouldn't go through the hole!

Any way I tried to maneuvre it, a part of it would refuse to go in.

In addition, the wires didn't want to tuck in neatly in the hole.

I had to hold the house with one hand while arranging the wires with tweezers. I also had to push the house all the way into the white tree I took so much effort to glue.

Now, being stupid and not watching Christine's video before putting everything together, I thought I'd put the house and scoop the snow around afterwards. That didn't work.

The snow kept getting anywhere but on the paper. It's a very messy project! I realized there was no way around it other than to take out the house, glue the snow down where I needed it and then go through the same acrobatics with the house all over again. I used a small fan brush to sweep the floor and cut the hole for the wires bigger. Due to all my messing around and the fact that the hole and the lower compartment aren't aligned, a lot of snow got in. I know one day I'll want to take everything out, make a different base and reglue the yard properly.

Even with the house out, it was difficult to reach into all the nooks to brush the glue.

I just piled on dry snow abundantly to cover all the ground.

I had an easier time putting the house back in sideways.

Almost done!

I added more snow in the back and rearranged some of it with bent tweezers, where I could reach it.

And then I noticed this...

In my defence, the globe looks very different in the promo photos. Either the globe is larger, or the hole smaller, and it's definitely higher up from the base. Look:

Anyway, it was late at night and I didn't examine these pictures until today. I just wanted to finish it. I put a piece of paper to hold the snow that was spilling out, poured some glue and stuck enough fake snow to cover most of the problem area.

The white paper stands out like a sore thumb, I'll try to fix it whenever I return to this project. I have enough leftovers for more attempts.

For now, I just display the front part and ignore or edit out the paper from the back view. Are you ready for pretty pictures? I enrolled one of my J-dolls to show the scale. She's not even 12", more like 10 and a half.

The yellow snow reminds me of coconut shavings.

Several views of the outside:

This is the best picture I have of the wreath

The inside (with lights on):

Details of the rooms:

I'm sure one of these was supposed to be a view of the whole house, but I guess I cropped them all to separate rooms.

To really appreciate the lights, I moved the house to a darker place. Here are two crisp photos with the good camera:

Ultimately, my compact camera is better at catching the overall effect in low light though:

I made a short video to show the on/off mechanism. It was very sensitive in the beginning and it would start whenever I put a tool on the desk, but now that it's drowned in snow, it only works if I slam the globe down.

I forgot to mention that it comes with a piece of twine to tie on the top hook. However, having two crazy cats in the house, I tucked the whole thing on a faraway shelf and won't ever hang it. The glass, by the way, is actual glass, not plastic. It's all very delicate.

I really like how this project turned out, it's very small and I like looking at it, turning it around and dangling the chandelier XD I can't say that I enjoyed putting it together, it's too hardcore even for me. The furniture was kind of fun, but the last part was downright annoying. The snow is very messy and unpleasant to the touch, it gets everywhere and it's very difficult to arrange the scene inside a fragile globe through which you can stick two fingers at most. I don't regret this purchase because the result is really cute, but it's definitely not for everyone. I mentioned on Facebook it would make a great gift for people you hate, I was only half joking!

What do you think, would you tackle such a project? Are you into dollhouses at all?

Blackkitty (^^)~