Haley Snell Handmade

 I would have assumed that painting the dollhouse would be easier than it was... The original paint was a cute pink with white trim, but it was dirty, so dirty that wiping it down it wouldn't come clean. Also, light pink isn't my style. First, even with a sponge brush, I ended up with brush marks in the paint. Second, it took multiple layers of paint to cover the original pink paint; even though I used chalk paint. After painting one of the front pieces, I decided to use Behr Chalk spray paint , but although there were no brush strokes, there were some clumps. Sanding them down got me back to the bare walls, so then I resprayed, ended up with chunks, and still ended up with bare walls after sanding. As such, my dollhouse has chunks of paint in it and we'll just have to live with it. I decided that this was going to be a white house with black trim. I absolutely love that look, although the inside is not going to be mostly white...Oh no, I do love color. But the white with b...

 When I was little, my aunt had an old radio that she had turned into a dollhouse. I was so fascinated with this dollhouse that I still remember it all these years later. So, two years ago I got a Hobby Lobby gift card for my birthday and decided to buy an inexpensive dollhouse, the Orchid by Greenleaf Dollhouses.  It sat on a shelf for two years because dollhouse building takes up a lot of room and I wanted to make sure that when I started I could walk away without feeling like I needed to put anything away.  Our youngest graduated from high school and left for Basic Training, so I took over his room and made it into a craft room (for those of you feeling bad that I took over his room, please note that he now lives in our basement, which is more like a studio apartment). Thank goodness I waited until I had the space to build the Orchid, it took up even more room than I anticipated. Because this was my first dollhouse, I read lots of blogs regarding tips, ideas, and in so...