DIY Dollhouse: Build and Decorate a Toy House Using Everyday Materials

by Alexia Henrion

Overview

D.I.Y. Dollhouse is a lavishly illustrated guide for budding architects, builders, and designers, showing then how to build and furnish their own eco-friendly dollhouse, with an incredible eye for detail. The simple instructions cover everything children (and parents) need to get started, from making rooms out of crate boxes and pieces of scrap fabric to crafting countless furniture and household items using recycled materials, such as empty plastic containers and bottles, bottle caps, cardboard boxes, plastic trays, drinking straws, and more. Learn how to transform these easy-to find household items into a sofa, bunk bed, desk chair, fridge, stove, bucket and mop, or even a hot tub for the rooftop garden, and come up with ideas of your own. The photographs of the finished interiors provide plenty of inspiration, and the project is sure to keep crafty children busy for days on end.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616896072
Publisher:	Chronicle Books
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	962,010
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Alexia Henrion is a freelance illustrator based in Hamburg, Germany. She received her bachelor of arts from the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in 2010 and her master of arts in book illustration in 2013.

Editorial Reviews

08/07/2017
This how-to book on building a dollhouse encourages “recycling, reusing garbage, and repurposing disposable products” in the name of having inexpensive fun. Henrion, an illustrator based in Hamburg, Germany, teaches readers by way of example, constructing a makeshift dollhouse by stacking six fruit crates on top of one another. Each crate serves as a room: there’s a living room, three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a patio. The rooms are decorated with colorful wallpaper and elaborate miniature home decor made from scraps around the house. The book showcases each room in colorful photographs and provides instructions for how to build key pieces of furniture. In the living room, Henrion creates a coffee table out of a yogurt container, with the neck of a plastic juice bottle serving as its pedestal. A box that once held tea becomes a davenport. For the bathroom, a single-serving cream container painted and flipped becomes the basin of the toilet. Henrion’s patterns for cutouts are easily traceable and the projects require basic tools like glue and an X-Acto knife. Oddly, the directions are written for children (“Ask your parents,” she writes regarding selecting trash for use), yet the level detail and the sophistication of the projects are better suited for adults. Color photos. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"The perfect book to inspire creative, cozy winter projects at home." - Pretty Prudent

"Henrion’s guide will inspire crafters to pick up cardboard, scissors, paint, and glue and get to work on their own miniature wonderlands. This offering has everything today’s imaginative young people should want: photographs containing dreamy textures and patterns, clear instructions, and easy-to-find supplies."
- School Library Journal

"D.I.Y. Dollhouse is a book for grownups and little ones and everyone in between…This book is about Design, Creativity, and Architecture. We know you are going to fall in love with this book as much as we have."
- Craft Gossip

From the Publisher

10/01/2017
Gr 4 Up—A descendant of Betsy Pflug's Boxed-In Doll Houses, Henrion's guide will inspire crafters to pick up cardboard, scissors, paint, and glue and get to work on their own miniature wonderlands. This offering has everything today's imaginative young people should want: photographs containing dreamy textures and patterns, clear instructions, and easy-to-find supplies. Eight chapters cover different areas of a home: living room, bathroom, bedrooms, kitchen, and an outdoor patio. Detailed building instructions for furniture and objects provide enough information for kids to copy what they see or make their own magic. Projects include a toilet, a washing machine, a sun umbrella, and a variety of chairs, tables, beds, and lamps. Makers will need just the most basic supplies to get started and then they can gather cardboard, discards, or inexpensive materials (empty creamer cups, tea boxes, bottle caps, beads, old magazines, and fabric scraps) to decorate. However, in the "Teenager's Bedroom" section, a poster on the wall of the room features a golliwog—like figure, a truly unnerving decision. VERDICT A would-be choice for crafting collections curtailed by problematic and insensitive imagery.—Heather Acerro, Rochester Public Library, MN

School Library Journal