Lala Chez Nuit

So here is the DOLLHOUSE! It is called Lala Chez Nuit (Lala Night House in French) which may sound slightly risque, until you realize that it is full of Lalaloopsy dolls, I made it entirely and night and french just sounds more exciting. I think it's probably one of the only houses in the world to be completely constructed at night, and yes, I am including real houses. The fact that this house has no plumbing, electricity or is on a 1 inch scale does not make it any less a house to me. I ordered the kit below off of Amazon for 30 dollars. It came completely in sheets of plywood perferated where the pieces could pop out. Let me tell you that I think that happened about 25% of the time. The rest I used an exacto knife for. I had to sand and prime all the pieces and paint them before they could be assembled. It wasn't hard it was SUPER time consuming. I was also again, doing all of this at night to try to keep it a surprise. I did sand some while waiting for Bramli at therapy.

The roof pieces came in sheets and then I just kept them in strips, I went through and just randomly painted with one color at a time until I thought I had a good mix.

If you are a crafter or scrapbooker and you do this, you are in serious luck!! The only thing I bought was paint!! Below I used a tin that some scrapbooking supplies had come in and just felt and fabric to make a couch and chair. You will see in the pictures below that one of the fun things about the lalaloopsy dolls is that they are really funky and crazy so I didn't feel like everything needed to be perfectly to scale. I thought it made it more whimsical and fun.

For pillows I just made different fabric flowers that I have done for hair accesories for my girls. and then stretchy ruffle ribbon and buttons and bows for around the tin.

You will need to do several coats of paint, make sure you don't paint where the shingles are going to go! Haha! Also if there was one tip I could give, please please please, shingle the house before you build it!!!! You can always go back and fill in a bit but honestly this part took forever and would have been so much easier if I had shingled these pieces and then stuck them together! I also recommend using hot glue to put the whole thing together and to shingle with.

This is the finished upstairs, I just used scrapbooking paper and modge-podge to paper the walls, paint on the floor and I modge-podged a paper doily on the floor for a rug. I also used a spare piece of wood to cover the hole where the stairs would have gone and made that the vanity area. I used pink and white striped paper and stretchy ribbon to finish it. I decided not to do stairs because the house was small and they looked pretty fragile. I used fabric scraps for curtains and, well, the baby Jesus mangers that my kids got from church for the two wooden benches. I glued pearls to the bottom for feet. Is that bad? We got 4! Anyway, I decided to come clean because I just knew if I didn't someone would ask!!! The little coffee table box is just a paper mache one I had with scrapbook paper and ribbon. I topped it with a little bell. My favorite part is the curtains to close off the bed area, Londyn loves them, and what girl wouldn't love to have that in their room!?

The bottom is pretty much the same scrapbook paper and paint and doily floor. Oh! I also got hardwood floor strips from Hobby Lobby and painted and used them for the baseboard. The hutch was a dollar at Michaels, I painted it. And the L wall hanging was a eyelet tin lid with a flower and letter glued to it. The rest of the furniture upstairs and down came with the dolls in little sets.

You will notice the kit had some topper type decorations at the tips of the gables and roof, I opted not to do them because they looked so fragile and I knew they would end up broken so fast. Along the seam of the front porch and big center gable I glued pearls. There was a little gap there and it looked funny. I also cut a doily in half and used it as a front mat. The little pot was in the unfinished wood stuff at Michaels and the flower was a scrapbooking thing.

So even though I lost waaaayyyy too much sleep the week before Christmas, I am happy with how it turned out and my girls were thrilled! Even Bramli plays with it tons!! But, um, never again. Please remind me of that!!!!