Simply Curious

Without further ado - the finished 1:144 scale Willowcrest.

I wanted to add just a bit more detail to the exterior, since there was a base for the house to sit on and the batteries to hide in.  I kept it simple, though I had plans of flowers.  I couldn't get the flocking to stick to the foam!

I blame the kitchen for most of my frustration and inability to finish this project.  Or, more accurately, the big windows that prevented me from putting in a kitchen in the first place.  It took me until last week to finally figure out how I could do it.  I ended up blocking up one of the windows, and put half of the kitchen on an interior wall.

I have a kitchen set, but they're made out of some sort of heavy resin, and it made the house much heavier than I wanted, so I went ahead and designed my own out of cardstock,  with a bit of wire for the faucet.

After verifying that yes, my sofa pattern works, I set out to test paper.  What would happen if I used something thinner?  Something thicker?  Something patterned?  Something textured?  At this scale, every tiny bit counts.

I went through my paper stash and picked three pieces of paper that I thought might look good as a sofa.  It was easy to test, I simply held the page I had cut my test sofas from over the potential pages and looked through the holes left behind.

I looked at all the tiny print pages, but also the ones with big, busy prints.  Sometimes, something can be so big that the little bits will work, too.

Thicker papers work better.  Thinner papers don't fold as well (I don't know why?) and tend to mash around the edges more quickly. However, there's hope!  Since there's three layers of paper, you can use two layers made out of plain cardstock, and then glue your preferred pattern to the exterior, cutting off the tabs first.

I haven't yet attempted to print my own, but it seems perfectly reasonable to do so, if your printer can do the fine work on cardstock.  Both the chair and sofa fit in a 1" x 2" block, so you don't need much!

I own a Silhouette Cameo, and for years I've been wondering if it was possible to make dollhouse furniture with it.   It seemed it would be easy enough for 1:48 scale, but could it do something as tiny as 1:144? After successfully making some really tiny cuts for a Christmas ornament, I decided to test it.

My house is lit and controlled by a button.  It's ridiculously exciting.  I don't HAVE to disguise those bulbs, but I want to!


I used e6000 glue to glue the gold bead to the ceiling around the Pico LED, and then glued the other bead on top of that.

And . . . that's it.  The hardest part was making decisions about which beads to use.  Oh, and taking pictures.  Taking pictures of lights is not easy! 

The beads were all roughly 2 mm sized, to help you figure out scale.  They do look a bit big in the house, but lighting is one of those things you can easily cheat on in regards to accuracy.  They come in so many sizes in real life, too!

Oh, look.  It's been four years.

What can I say?  Life has been busy, and I started sharing my projects on Facebook because, well, I get responses there.

BUT, I started posting about my 1:144 scale Willowcrest here, and I'm going to finish it here, so let's keep going!  Here's where we left off:

Yes, I was determined to make this tiny house light up.  That required a bit of planning.

Things you need to think about before lighting a house are:

What kind of fixtures do you want?
What materials can you use to make them look that way?
Where do you want the lights to be?
Where do you put the power source for the lights?
How do you run the wires to those locations from the light source?

I'm going to address the second part of these questions first.


I opted to keep it simple, and just put one ceiling light in each room.  I turned to Evan Designs for my supplies, based on suggestions from True2Scale.

I ordered 1 switched coin cell battery holder, 4 3v warm white pico LED lights, and some heat shrink tubing.  (please hover over the text for the links, the lines don't show up?) These bulbs are TINY.  I can't really take a photo of them, they're just little yellow blobs, but they give off an amazing amount of light.

I used poster board for the ceiling on the upper floors, and ran the wires up through a tiny hole, then down the outside sides of the house.  (Had I planned ahead further, I could have run them down the inside of the house.)

For the lower floors, the wires are glued to the ceiling and run to the interior corners, then down the wall and out under it.  A little paint will make them vanish.

You'll notice that each bulb has two wires. One is colored red at the far end, just before you get to bare wire, and the other colored green.  Once you've got your wires where you want them to end up, you need to carefully gather up and twist all the exposed ends of the red wires together, and then the ends of all the green wires together.  (it's possible the green wires were black, just make sure your colors match!)

Cut two short lengths (about one inch, perhaps?) of the narrower heat shrink tubing, and slide one onto each of your twists of wires, pushing it further back so you can work with the exposed ends.  Then you need to match your twists to the proper color on the battery coin holder, and twist red to red, green to black, ensuring the exposed metal touches.  (it's only important that the reds go together, the other color clearly doesn't matter!)
Now, get a battery and test to make sure it all works before you do anything more permanent.  Make sure the exposed ends of the red and green wires don't touch!

Oh, and relax.  It's only 3 volts.  Your skin has a resistance to such tiny amounts of electricity and you won't feel anything.  I can hold the wires directly against a battery to test the lights and it's just fine. But it could mess up your project if it's improperly wired, so make sure your exposed wires are completely covered!


I ran into the slight problem of having a coin cell battery that was labeled 3v, but only half the width required to fit in the device. I must have scavenged it from a Dollar Tree magnet flashlight. I eventually found the right size. 

Once you've determined everything works, slide the tubing to completely cover all the wires, and use a heat gun or similar to shrink the tubing.  I tried to use a hairdryer, but it apparently didn't get hot enough.  Tug gently to ensure there's a tight grip.  I will say that I had some problems with this,  (the wires are too thin for even the thinnest tubing!) and I'm not sure how to fix it, except with another, longer layer of heat shrink tubing.  Just make sure you put both layers on the wires first, and keep the second layer away from the heat source!


And it works. Check it out!




So where did I put that battery and switch?  It's pretty obnoxious to have all that wiring and that heavy battery and casing dragging about with this tiny house.

Fortunately, this particular dollhouse came with a simple wooden base, and I was able to use it to hide the wiring, battery, and switch.  To keep it accessible, I cut out a frame to fit inside, and then used a piece of cardstock to act as a sliding lid.  I'm using museum wax (and/or orthodontic wax, they're essentially the same thing) to prevent the battery from sliding.  I used E6000 glue to hold the switch in place.

I didn't measure properly, or I would have realized the button was the same width as the side pieces, and I would have cut the frame to glue to the bottom of the piece, rather than level with the interior.  It's a minor problem, fortunately, and easy to work around.

And the lighting is done!  Not too painful, right?

Having mentally completed the second floor, I've moved down to the first.  I wanted to fit both a kitchen and a living room down there.  I have a basic metal kitchen set I bought years ago from Anita McNary, plus the living room kit I had picked up from Diminutive Details.

I got totally hung up on printing wallpaper, so I'm not as far along as I would like to be.

My printer is probably about 12 years old, and I bought it for $35 at Big Lots.  It's printed out tons of school papers, crafts, cards, letters, and even wedding invitations and table decorations.  But in this digital age my use has been steadily declining, and in the past few years, it seems like every time I went to use it, the ink had dried up. I blamed the lack of use and the high, dry altitude.  Everyone else is blaming the printer head, which is so old it's not self cleaning.  My attempt with a qtip was not successful.  I'm not willing to buy yet another ink cartridge after the failure of the other one, so eventually I have to pick out a new printer if I can convince myself I still need one.

I finally snuck a print in at work, and initially decided it was too blurry for use.  I eventually changed my mind on one style, and decided to use it in the bedroom. In the bathroom and the downstairs, I opted to paint.

The thing about 144th scale houses is that you have to decorate all the walls COMPLETELY before assembly, so I have started concentrating on everything that goes on walls.  Everything is so tiny that you have to reconsider traditional decorative items.  My tiniest bead were put to use as container and candles.  Scraps of wood from the furniture kits became wall shelves, and even tinier scraps of fabric became towels.

The white curtains?  Tissue paper, carefully scrunched up and glued for the bathroom, and the bedroom is bits of lace.  I have some amazing tiny laces in my stash, but sometimes it's the not-so-tiny but detailed laces that work best.  For the bedroom, I ended up cutting out elements of a trim that worked perfectly for a hint of a draped valance.  Can you see the arches in the 'open' section?  The solid section will make a great rug.




Here is the bedroom, pre final assembly.  (I haven't done the back wall yet.)  I made up a faux gallery wall with plain old printer paper and a colored pencil.  The curtain rods are just thin wire.

I'm documenting this now because it's probably not going to be visible once it's assembled!  Certainly not photograph-able.  But check out the effect of all these detail below!





I promise I will dig out my real camera soon.

At a miniature show a few years ago, I fell for a series of 1:144th scale room kits by Diminutive Details.  So cheap, so detailed, and at the time I bought multiple 'rooms' I wasn't even thinking about that scale.  They just followed me home!

I decided I had better pull them out and work on them, particularly as I couldn't progress any further on the micro Willowcrest until I got my printer ink and, frankly, knew exactly what I was going to put where.  I'm planning to add some interior walls and I need to know if and where I can place them.  Furniture determines this!

I started with the bathroom kit.  Seeing the kit next to my 144th Bay House made me VERY concerned that the pieces were too big for the rooms.
There were no instructions, but I was able to figure out how things went together based on the picture provided.  the pieces came with punched in two thicknesses of wood, one to provide depth, the other to provide details.  The thicker pieces were held in place on a piece of sticky paper, when I peeled it off the back of the board, all the pieces came out I had to cut the thinner pieces off the board with an Xacto knife, which resulted in a tag that needed to be dealt with.  They were super easy to assemble, but I ran into a problem when I decided I wanted my tub and toilet to look like porcelain.  I eventually remembered I had white nail polish and pulled it out of my stash.  It was adequate, but I was surprised that the wood was so absorbent.  I should have sealed the wood first, but I didn't think the polish would be absorbable.  The toilet looks terrible.  Next time I should just remember that I have glossy sealer.

I think there was a glitch on that big cabinet.  I figure I can hide it somehow.

I cut out a new floor for the 2nd floor, and marked on it where all the windows were, plus where the center of the floor was.  (there are windows EVERYWHERE.)  The bathroom furniture all fits in the room, but it feels crowded in there.  I think I would have much preferred a pedestal sink.  It wouldn't take up so much visual space. I'm still figuring out how to make one.  There is a window where the hamper is, so I can't put any of the other pieces there, and the tub just looks odd from the narrow side.

I'm thinking the cabinet can go, and if I can do a pedestal sink, the sink will go, too.  

My delight with the 144th scale Willowcrest kit (Aegean Sea) waned a bit when I explored deeper into the box.  The kit comes with furniture, but I was highly unimpressed with it.  First and foremost, it is NOT to scale.  Not even close.   Check out the bed below:

I have the sneaking suspicion that the Willowcrest is never going to be finished.  I'm now attempting to 'let it go' emotionally and will likely get rid of it physically at some point.  I LIKE living in an apartment sized space, and I foresee lots more moves and small spaces in the future, and since the last movers refused to touch it.  . . well, it's just going to be a pain for the rest of my life.