Big and Bold

 One of my visions for the Manchester Country Home 1:12 scale included creating a more modern farmhouse, a farmhouse with no clutter, clean, cheerful, and bright. Hooked on the HGTV show Fixer Upper, I loved the clean, modern farm house look, but soon grew weary of the monochromatic color pallet that was basically shades of white to gray to black. I like color. I spend hours--too many--perusing through Pinterest looking for inspiration and ideas for the modern interior farm house design, discovering that the newer trends in dollhouses are Joanna Gaines and Ikea inspired, creating colorful, simple, whimsical play houses that I am sure delight little boys and girls and the moms seem to have a lot fun creating these cute little houses.

I think I have found my inspiration.

In years past I've had a love affair with wallpaper. Both of my previous homes had wallpaper. When we moved to the acreage to a newer home, I was told that we wouldn't be wallpapering when it came time repaint the hideous colors of previous owners. I was okay with that because the wallpaper trend and wained. 

For my dollhouses, decorating them has been all about the wallpaper, selecting just the right paper for each room, but all mostly Victorian inspired and certainly by today's interior design standards dated. 

I've seen some miniaturists in my Facebook groups use huge prints for their tiny walls and really had to question their judgement until I began to see that the new trend in wallpaper design for the real home is the HUGE floral print and I am fascinated and love the bold, large prints. 

Scale can out the window--mostly. 

I don't quite know where to begin, so let's just start at the beginning.

You can see these papers in the first house that renovated--the one I call The Blue Farmhouse Now Pink. I love these papers that I ordered from Itsy Bitsy. They are out of stock now, but still they wouldn't work in the this house because I'm going BOLD. 

Sourcing this new wallpaper can be frustrating, so I've been shopping scrapbook paper, with limited luck. The bonus room on the second floor of addition with be an office of sorts and will have sky light and lots of house plants, so I thought maybe a botanical paper, but this treescape just won't work. I'll keep looking. Besides I don't have plan for the attic yet.

Then I thought perhaps a mural, so I found this country scene by Jessica Cole that I thought might work in the dining room, but it's a no go, too, mostly because when I cut out the window, the focal point of the scene would be cut out.

I found this collection of fat quarters at Joann's that I fell in love with, so it really was my inspiration for big and bold in this house, but if I used a big print for the bedroom, the wallpaper had to be quiet. So I bought several different sheets and found this scrapbook paper at scrapbooking supply store. 

I've researched modern design for bathrooms, too, and roughed in this shower. I purchased the shower base for Elf Miniatures a couple of years ago then I use clear acetate package wrapping to fashion non closing shower doors or shower panels. I used Washi tape on the edges to help define the door, but won't on the acetate that I'll use for the doors. The "tile" is new at Michael's. I loved it for the shower stall and the floor, but most designs show different tiles used for the wall and floor and these sheets are only 8x8 inches, so the floor would require a seam, which I want to avoid.

  

I discovered Jessica Cole's "cement tile" that I downloaded and printed as the backsplash for the kitchen, but I love it as the bathroom floor, so the hunt for the backsplash continues. I had other wall coverings picked, but found this scrapbook paper and think it might work, but let me ask you: Do the three patterns make the room too busy?  I'm thinking so.

Now the dining room. Oh do I love this giant floral, the third downloaded and printed Jessica Cole paper.  I'd love to something like this in my bedroom or bathroom for real.

There is just one problem with this downable, printable sheet, the beautiful big flower is right in the middle and will be lost when I cut it out for the window.😞 The wall will still be beautiful.

I think the small dots upstairs paired with the large print directly below is a very nice combination. The scrapbook paper is and 12x12 inch sheet, cut to size and the printed paper is printed on an 8.5 x 11 inch paper, also trimmed to size.

In the other houses, all three walls of each room were papered. With these large scale prints, only wall  will be papered with the remaining walls painted white that will unify the entire house; otherwise, too much large design will overwhelm the entire house. 

I am really loving this house. I'll write about the flooring soon, something that I am not very good at, but the next project will be the wiring, so I'd better get my supplies ordered.  

With Itsy Bitys still my favorite wallpaper source, I discovered another source for the modern dollhouse, Jessica Cole and other Etsy Stores that offer download and print papers. I have resisted printing my own wallpaper because I just worried that the ink would smear or not hold up or fade, so here are the some suggestions that I'm following as I print my own paper.

• Papers: 
• Use good quality card stock that is lignin and acid free. Lignin is a tree compound that naturally occurs in the chemical cell make-up of the tree, but is removed during manufacture. Serious scrapbookers learned some years ago that these chemicals degrade the quality of photographs that mounted on them or printed on these papers, so I apply the same standard to my printed wallpaper--good quality paper. 
• I've used both lightweight scrapbook paper and and card stock; the card stock is heavier and less likely to wrinkle or tear.
• For the Jessica Cole wallpapers, I printed them on HP photo mat paper, It is heavy paper with a good surface. For tile floors and I would experiment on an a 4x6 glossy photo paper before printing on an entire sheet to see if I get the desired finish. 
• Before I install the printed wallpapers, I'll them spray with Krylon Make it Last sealer to set the ink, preserve the color, and to protect from paper's natural enemies: sunlight and dust.
• Adhesives: 
• I read all kinds of suggestions for adhering wallpaper: everything from actual wallpaper paste to Modge Podge to tacky glue to double sided tape. I prefer two products that are the actually about the same: Grandmother Stover's easily purchased at Hobby Lobby or online and Yes that will come in a giant container for big projects. Both smooth on nicely, don't set up immediately  and are slippery so that you can adjust and position your wallpaper; and these adhesives release easily  to remove old paper when it is saturated with warm water. 
• Cost
• Big and Bold will add that modern touch to a miniature wall, but a little goes a long way. The nice thing about these papers is that it only takes one sheet--depending the size of the wall, of course. The Jessica Cole papers were $5.75 a download. At first I thought that was pretty pricey, but I own it and can print as many sheets as I need for a project for the price of the initial download, and I need only one 8.5x11sheet per room. (Not adding the cost of photo paper that will vary)
• On the other hand, Itsy Bitsy Mini papers vary in price depending on scale, peel and stick, or unpasted, which I would order for $4.00 a sheet (10.5"x 11.25"). If I paper all three walls of a room, I'd probably have to order 3 sheets with considerable waste. (Click on the link to see the pricing). I will return to Itsy Bitsy for it's wonderful selection of papers, coordinated sets, great quality, and really good, personal customer service. I would be thrilled if they would design some large image papers.
• Shop around then on Etsy and other sites to find exactly what you want and what you can afford. 

 Links:

Jessica Cole: You can download from her website or her Etsy Store

Itsy Bitsy

Thank you for visiting today. I always appreciate your comments. 

Happy Mother's Day