Chapter XXVI: Doll House of Pasteboard

COUNTRY houses are very attractive, even the toy ones possess a certain charm. Here is a great, big, beautiful, country doll house for the doll people to live in. It has window shutters to open and close, doors that will open and shut, and the doors have little door knobs like real ones. Each room has a different, colored frieze around the walls, and the floor of the living-room is covered with a handsome rug. All the windows are curtained, and the house is ready to furnish. You can make any and all kinds of furniture with empty spools of different sizes and pieces of pasteboard cut in various ways. As a hint, just to show how easily the furniture is made, glue a round piece of pasteboard on top of

=A Large Spool=

and you will have a pretty little table; paint it a red brown to resemble mahogany. If you need more suggestions, spool furniture may be found in “What a Girl Can Make and Do.”

To make the doll house. Get three stiff pasteboard boxes about fourteen inches long, thirteen inches wide and six and one-half inches high (Fig. 423). Cut the thirteen-inch front and the right-hand side from the first box (Fig. 424). Take the second box and lay the fourteen-inch front down flat on top of an old, common wooden table which can be used without fear of injury, and with the aid of a ruler, draw two straight lines across the front on the inside of the box; let each line be about one and one-fourth inch from the side. Keep the box as it is while you score the lines with a sharp penknife; then cut out the front, leaving the upright pieces to form the corners at each end (Fig. 425). Cut the thirteen-inch front and left-hand side from the third box (Fig. 426). Mark two high windows (Fig. 427) on the inside, near the front of the left side of the first box (Fig. 424). Make each window two and one-half inches high and two and one-half inches wide, leaving a space of three-fourths of an inch between them. Lay this left side of the box flat down on the table and use the sharp penknife to score the dotted lines and cut the heavy lines. Always cut and score from the inside of the box, otherwise the shutters will turn inward.

When the window is scored and cut, throw

=Open the Shutters=

and look out through the little opening of the doll’s kitchen window (Fig. 428).

In the second box (Fig. 425) cut a door five and one-half inches high and three inches wide through the left side wall, one and three-fourths of an inch from the back wall. The two high windows, each two and one-fourth inches wide and two inches high and the one ordinary large window, four inches high and two and one-fourth inches wide, must be marked on the back wall (Fig. 429) and cut (Fig. 430). Cut another door in the room through the right-hand side wall near the front (Fig. 431) and bend it wide open (Fig. 432).

=Make Doorknobs=

of large-sized beads, and fasten one on each side of both doors with a strong, heavy piece of broom-straw run through and glued in a hole punctured through the door with a coarse darning needle or hat-pin. Slide a bead on each end of the broom-straw and glue them securely in place. Strengthen the hinges of each door with a narrow strip of thin white cotton cloth pasted lengthwise on the open door, half on the door and half on the wall.

In the third box (Fig. 426) cut a large window through the back wall four and one-half inches high and three and one-fourth inches wide. Fig. 433 shows this window in detail with one shutter open and one closed.

Excellent

=Window Glass Can Be Made=

of white tissue paper cut to fit the various windows, allowing one-fourth of an inch extension on all four sides. Immerse the paper thoroughly on both sides in oil; with a dry, clean cloth wipe off the oil; again immerse the papers, let them remain in the oil for some minutes and a second time wipe the oil from both sides of each paper. This makes the paper almost transparent.

The window frame or sash, is made of strips of black or inked paper, one long, narrow strip pasted down the entire centre length of each window glass and a wider strip fastened across the first strip at the centre, from side to side of the glass (Fig. 434). Keep the glass and the sash divisions perfectly smooth while fastening them together.

When all are ready, close the shutters of each room in turn, and place first one and then another side flat down on top of the table and brush a little glue all around the edges of the window opening (Fig. 435); lay the glass over the opening, making sure that the edges of the glass extend evenly out on the wall surface from all sides. Do not rub the glass, press it tightly down with a dry cloth.

After the windows have been glazed cut strips of fresh, smooth, ordinary wrapping-paper, not less than one-fourth of an inch wide, and cover the edges of each window glass with the strips, paste them on straight and even to form woodwork around the window as well as to cover the edges of the glass (Fig. 436). Fit the second box (Fig. 425) in the first one (Fig. 424), mark and cut off the portion of the first box (Fig. 424) extending beyond the front of Fig. 425; do the same with the third box (Fig. 426), that all three boxes may be of equal depth, and when fastened together the long front line may be straight and even.

=If You Want the Doll House to Last for Years,=

reinforce the building with strips of wood (A B C, Fig. 424; D E F, Fig. 425; G H I, Fig. 426). Where any two strips meet, glue the ends together and fasten to the pasteboard walls. If you cannot obtain very thin strips of wood, use strips of pasteboard as stiff as wood.

Be sure that your flour paste has boiled well and is strong and thick, for fastening the three rooms together. Give the kitchen (Fig. 437) a generous layer of paste down the inside edge of the back wall and along the edge of the floor at the open side; then fit the left-hand edge of the floor and back wall of the living-room (Fig. 438) over the paste and press it firmly in place. Fasten the bedroom (Fig. 439) on the right-hand side of Fig. 438 in the same manner.

Close the little shutters and

=Place the Doll House on the Floor=

of a real room, tight up against the wall; then put weights along on the inside edges of the floor of the toy living-room and pile books up close against the back wall; at the same time do not press the side walls out of plumb; keep them straight.

When the house is perfectly dry, tack one thin strip of wood across the entire length of the top of the back wall of the house from end to end. You can manage this very readily by turning the house and laying the back wall flat on the table, the top edge of the wall barely covering the strip of wood; then you can tack at long intervals from the inside of the wall and fasten the pasteboard walls to the wood. Be sure to glue the ends of the side wall strips securely to the back wall strip.

Set the house upright in proper position and tack thin strips of wood along the under edge of the bottom of the house. Fit one strip under the house at a time and tack from the inside of the house through the pasteboard floor into the wood. Make the ends of the upright side wall strips fast to the underfloor strip. When finished, the bottom of the house should resemble Fig. 440.

=Make the Frieze=

for every room of three strips of tissue paper cut five-eighths of an inch wide. Fold each separate strip crosswise through the centre; again fold through the centre, and fold a third time, making eight layers of paper. Cut the folded strip like Fig. 441, unfold, and you will have Fig. 442. Try for a different pattern in each room, and let the colors vary. A soft yellow for kitchen, sage green for living-room, and a light, warm yellow pink for bedroom are a pleasing variety.

Brush a thin layer of paste the width of the frieze along the top edge of the walls of the kitchen (Fig. 424) and fasten on the yellow frieze. Do the same with the living-room, fastening on the green frieze (Fig. 425), and in the bedroom the pink frieze (Fig. 426).

=Cut a Rug for the Living-Room=

from sage-green tissue paper; make it ten inches long and seven and one-half inches wide. Fold the paper lengthwise through the centre, then crosswise through the centre, and a second time crosswise, making eight layers. Cut according to Fig. 443, unfold once (Fig. 444), and cut the designs K and N; fold diagonally the loose corners L according to dotted line and cut design M (Fig. 445). Open out the rug (Fig. 446).

Cover the required space on the living-room floor with a thin layer of paste, place the rug down over it, using both hands, to avoid wrinkles.

With the same kind of wrapping-paper used for the woodwork you can make projecting window-sills. Fold and crease the paper into a narrow box-lid long enough to extend across the window, including the woodwork; glue one of the lengthwise turned-down edges on the wall below the window glass.

Make three

=Shelves for Books,=

with the ends of the shelves turned up to hold the books in place. Fasten the lengthwise turned-down edge of the first shelf on the wall three-quarters of an inch below the high window in the living-room, and paste the other two shelves below at short distances apart.

You can easily make tiny books of several pieces of folded paper cut the desired size and sewed together through the centre fold. Hang red

=Tissue Paper Curtains=

in the living-room, white tissue-paper curtains in the bedroom, and yellow ones in the kitchen, as seen in Fig. 447.

Little shelves over the tops of the doors may be made in like manner, also a cunning little three-cornered bracket to fit the corner of the room for holding a tiny Japanese vase of satiny yellow ware, the straight up-and-down kind, made of a three-fourth-inch length section of common straw pasted on a wee round disk of paper. Fill the vase with tiny red paper flowers fastened on broom-straws.