Vintage Pram Do-Up!!!

August:
This pram is vintage.  It used to be my Aunty Anne's, my Dad's oldest sister, pram when she was a little girl - and she is now 76!  Then her daughter had it, and then I got it, and now I am getting it done up for my niece for her Christmas present this year.

Like the dollhouse, it has been in the shed for a number of years, exposed to dirt, bugs, rodents and shed cats.  But despite that it is still in reasonable condition, and after a bit of sugar soap it came up quite a bit cleaner... ok a bit of work with a rag won't go astray.

I am intending on taking it to a professional for an inspection and to fix one or two annoying features. 


December:
Well due to a tight financial situation, this pram did not go to a professional to fix.  In the end I felt it would just have to get a good clean.  As you can see below it was a wee bit manky.  So I started off with a vacuum clean all over inside and out.

And then I took to it with a cloth and warm water with sugar soap in it.  Then for good measure I went over the wheels, which were especially dirty, with a toothbrush and some bathroom cleaner.  I then hosed the wheels off outside.

I think you will agree that the wheels are much cleaner now.


I was going to make the bedding considering all the stuff I had as a child is currently in storage and inaccessable.  So I went to a shop in Hamilton called Purple Patch.  They have a lot of handmade toys and knitted baby outfits.  They had a new mattress (which is good because my old one was my Mum's too, and it has seen better days).

I was able to source a nice lemon sheet - much cheaper than if I bought the material and then cut and hemmed it.

They had this lovely lemon and blue cover as well.  Much nicer than I would have made.

And here is the pram all made up.  You can see that broken leather strap that is supposed to hold up the hood of the pram.  I think my bro can fix that up.  I hope my niece appreciates this vintage pram for Christmas.  She has plenty of dolls to put in it.

Super Hero Lair - the beginning.

The other week I took my six year old nephew to school and stayed for a while so he could show me all his artwork and writing on the walls and wires.  His letter to Santa caught my eye.  Naturally he wanted an iPhone and charger and more Lego, but he also wanted a house for a superhero.  I think that came about because of his sister getting a dollhouse.


So I started putting my thinking cap on.  How could I do this for him....

I went to The Warehouse and looked at bookcases.  I decided the best one to get was one that normally had three spaces in it.  At $15 for one of these bookcases I would be a fool not to use them.  However, an action figure like the ones my nephew has would be too tall for the space.  So my brother helped my drill holes at the half-way mark and we put the shelf together with two bigger spaces.

I accidentally put the back on the wrong way round.  But that actually worked to my advantage.  I wanted to paper the back wall in a different colour to mitigate the blackness of the shelf itself and the paper would glue better to the wood side of the back panel, with a bit of a rub with some sandpaper first, rather than the shiny black laminate.

I went through my scrapbooking paper and this was the one piece I felt I c ould use with a superhero.  I had two pages of it.

I used the shelf that we didn't put into the bookcase as the guide for how wide I needed to trim the paper.  The paper was not tall enough, so I had to use part of the second paper to finished the first wall.  I did not have enough paper to complete the back wall in the lower section.

I decided to decorate the walls left and right with maps and pictures of superheroes.  So I cruised through the net and found these pictures, printed them out, cut them out and glued them on.

The next step would be to finished the back wall of the lower section, do the floors and make some furniture.  That would be another blog post.

Finishing the Dollhouse

Earlier in December I finally finished the dollhouse for my niece.  She had been so patient waiting for it, but I wanted it to be just right.  This is the first chance I have had to blog it due to laptop issues.


There were a few things I thought needed adding since the previous post, so I went $2 shopping again.

In the picture above I was missing two small diamonds near the front between the snow flakes. I got that sorted.

I think this wall as the right degree of randomness.  The blue sparkle pick up the opposit wall and the pink/purple/diamond sparkles match the pale purple of this wall.  Most of these were stick on sparkles, but some fell off after a few days so I super glued them on.

Here is an example of a sparkle falling off... I did replace it though.

I really liked being able to use these flower type shapes finally.

I decided this wall needed a butterfly to finish it off.

Again I went for random pinks and purple sparkles on this paper.  To do too much would be over powering.

 This wall really needed some butterflies to also balance it.

 

I felt with the paper I used here being so busy, bright and colourful, that I would go for the framed picture look.  I saved the frames from the internet last year for class photos.  I resize the frames to suit what I want and then stick another picture over them an manourvre the sizing, group, lock and then I can resize.  I decided to go inspirational and hearts for these pictures I printed out.

I wanted to use felt for the flooring... but it was the wrong size and too expensive.  So I went to Spotlight and got some brown scrapbooking paper card and cut and glued to the floor.  It looks tidy and it doesn't takeaway from the colours on the walls.

As you can see I fixed the missing diamante.  Below are the photos of the finished product.

On the first Saturday of December, while my nephew and niece were at swimming, I "broke into" my brother's house and set up the dollhouse with the furniture in my niece's room.

When she came home I whispered into her ear to go and have a look in her room.  She was pretty stoked!  Not everything I bought for the dollhouse fits in the dollhouse, so I also got her a blue box to store things in when she isn't playing with them.

However, what four year old is that tidy?