A Miniature Craft Room in a Suitcase

Every now and then a crafting project comes along that sweeps you off your feet and captures your imagination in a way that nothing else can, and this was one such project. The idea of a room in a suitcase, or a portable dolls house, came from issue 93 of Mollie Makes and was created, along with some patterns for you to make at home, by Bethan of Little Lucciola, who makes and sells these little wonders from her Etsy shop, and you can see the room she created for the magazine in the photo below.

As soon as I saw Bethan's room in Mollie Makes, with the setting, styling and attention to detail, I felt so inspired to have a go at something similar myself. I had a chat with Bella and she wanted very much to get involved so we ordered a suitcase and made a plan.

Would you like a tour? You can hang your bag and coat on the peg rail right there. 

Pull up the stool at the desk and switch on the radio. The pencils are sharpened and knitting needles ready, fabric folded and paper rolled. 

The standing lamp behind the chair gives a soft light for reading. 

Take a seat in the arm chair - your current WIP is in a basket at your feet....

....and there's a lovely soft alpaca throw if you're cold.

Coffee or tea? I'll put the kettle on.

The footstool is a handy spare seat and the rug will keep your toes warm on those floorboards. 

Wouldn't you love a craft room like this? Oh, I would. I'd move in if I could. There's so much here I love; the table with the hairpin legs, the chair, the rug, the details like wall hangings and posters, the peg rail, the plants and little copper watering can... 

As always with this kind of project, I can hear a voice asking what and who it is for. Is it a toy? Is it for display? Aren't your children a bit old for this kind of thing? (At nine and eleven, NO!) Bella will play with this with her Maileg mice, and she and Angus were very involved in the making of the various parts. Even if they weren't actually cutting or painting or gluing, they were very often sat with me at the kitchen table while I was working on it, asking questions, suggesting things, playing with or making other things. But it's not really robust enough to seriously be a toy, some care does need to be taken with the furniture and tiny parts inside, some of which are sharp. So is it for me? Well the pleasure for me was in the making. Now it's finished, I have no use for it really, it was all about the process, and what an indulgent, imaginative and totally enjoyable one it was. 

I've spent a few hours over the last few weeks looking at dolls houses and miniatures online and it is so seductive. Not the period, Victorian style collectables, that's not my cup of tea, but I love it when people create a modern home, like you'd actually live in, in miniature. And when the interior design is beautiful too, even better. It's an internet rabbit hole I quite happily fell down and I could, with enough time and money, get quite obsessed with the miniature world so it's probably best for everyone if I don't. I'll just stick to small projects like suitcases for now.

Supplies

I tried, as much as possible, to use things I already had. To just go out and buy everything ready made from a dolls house supply website seemed too easy, not to mention expensive. The fun for me is in making these little things, especially if I can repurpose something ordinary from around the house. Over the years I've amassed a reasonable collection of useful crafting tools and kit such as a glue gun, spray paint in various colours, beads and buttons in different sizes, string, yarn etc so I didn't need to buy much. I did spend around £20 on some pieces of balsa wood in various sizes and thicknesses, a small amount of wooden dowel, wooden discs and some more chunky wooden beads. I also bought the suitcase, which at £15 for a set of three seemed good value, and the two smaller cases are already in use in Bella's bedroom. I also, with the children's permission of course, took some small accessories from their Playmobil sets and perked them up a little. 

Details

The thing I always want to know when seeing handmade miniatures is how they were made, so below I've listed everything I made for anyone who might be interested. Please ask in the comments if there is anything you'd like to know.

Suitcase: this measures approximately 30 x 20 x 10 cm. I painted the inside with white emulsion and drew on floorboards with pencil and ruler. On the back wall, I used crafting paper to create a half-wall of wallpaper, and used a strip of balsa wood to make a picture ledge that ran above it. 

 Desk: a small piece of balsa wood and four long hair/kirby grips. I slightly opened each grip and sprayed them copper before gluing them to the underside of the table.

Basket: a plastic lid from a bottle of mouthwash covered with glue and wrapped around with string (and all done, including the rolls of paper, by Bella).

Chair: small squares of foam covered in grey fabric (living room curtain off-cuts) with balsa wood arms and legs.

Bookcase: pinched from Bella's existing dolls house and sprayed white, then stocked with folded fabric and felt.

 Lampshade: a plastic roll-on deodorant lid sprayed copper.

Textiles: a knitted throw (some lovely alpaca yarn on 3mm needles) and a chunky crochet cushion (cotton yarn on a 3mm hook).

Coffee table: a wooden disc, bought just like that, and wooden dowel legs glued on.

Yarn basket: wool felt sewn together on each corner with blanket stitch. The balls of yarn are little pieces of plastic straw with wool wrapped tightly around each with a needle, and the knitting needles are tooth picks with a tiny wooden bead glued to the top.

Rug: now this is ingenious and, like the yarn and knitting needles, one of the patterns that came with the magazine. You draw your circle shapes onto a sheet of paper, then stick clear plastic over the top. You gradually glue your spirals of string until you have the desired shape then wait for it to dry, them simply peel away the plastic sheet. It's ingenious.

Footstool: just dark grey wool yarn in DC, stuffed with toy stuffing.

Standing lamp: the base is three lengths of dowel glued together and the shade is a section of the inner tube of toilet roll covered in fabric.

Plants: chunky wooden beads, sprayed copper or left natural, and filled with small bits I snipped off any fake plants I could find in the house. The trailing plant is just embroidery silk threaded with tiny random pieces of felt.

Desk accessories: the needles sit in the lid from a spray bottle of leave-in conditioner, while the pencils are in a Playmobil bucket that I spray painted copper. The knitting needles are toothpicks topped with beads as before, and pins. The pencils are toothpicks snapped in half with their tips coloured with felt pen. Angus made those.

Other accessories: all Playmobil parts taken and repurposed. I especially love the little copper watering can. It was purple before. 

Wall hanging: a curtain ring sprayed copper and hung with small lengths of cotton yarn.

Stool: a  plastic milk bottle lid, four hair grips and an off-cut of fake sheepskin. As with the desk, the hair grips were stretched open and sprayed before being glued to the sheepskin-covered lid.

Pictures: possibly my favourite part. I found photos on my computer and edited them so that they were tightly cropped and with exaggerated colour and contrast, so they showed up well. I cut and pasted them into a Word document, played around with size, then printed them onto white card. The frames are just crafting matchsticks.

I do hope you've enjoyed looking around this tiny room. If you have a favourite corner or item I'd love to hear it. 

Cookery Calendar Challenge: June

My choice for June's cookery calendar challenge was The Hairy Dieters Make It Easy, the most recent title in the successful Hairy Dieters collection of cookery books. I quite like watching these two on TV although I've never bought any of their books before, but John saw this for £4.99 on Amazon and bought it on a whim. A few Amazon reviewers complained that this was too similar to the previous books, with too many old recipes re-hashed or tweaked and presented as new ones, but being new to these books I have no complaints.

The "diet" part of the book is the calorie counting kind but I ignored that part and just looked at the recipes, which are really good. As soon as this arrived in the post I'd already found ten things I wanted to cook and so it was the obvious choice for June. While neither John or I are on strict diets we are both making an effort to eat less rubbish and more fresh fruit and vegetables, and I always want to cook and eat more lightly in the summer anyway. This isn't what I'd call a coffee table book; there's no beautiful jacket design or velvet ribbon bookmark, but the inside is well designed and simple with crisp photography, clear recipes and instructions in a font that's easy to read, and useful suggestions for alternatives or substitutions.

Our first recipe was Roast Cod with Lentils from the "half dozen winners" chapter of recipes with few ingredients. You season the cod and roast it in the oven, then while that's cooking fry diced chorizo in a pan, adding cherry tomatoes and a pack of pre-cooked puy lentils towards the end, stirring it until the lentils are hot and the tomatoes about to burst, before serving with vegetables. The only thing I changed was not using a packet of pre-cooked lentils because I think they're too expensive. We both love puy lentils so I buy them by the box and cook them myself in stock, which did make this recipe take a little longer but still the whole thing only took half an hour from start to finish.

John and I liked it a lot, the kids liked most of it apart from the lentils, and Angus told me off for buying cod. Actually, we ate puy lentils again last night in a salad with feta and beetroot with a basil vinaigrette over the top. So delicious. I told you we like those lentils.

Next up was John's choice and a bold one: Pork Stroganoff from the "15-minute fillers" chapter (those guys love a snappy chapter title!). I say bold because John, much to my extreme disappointment, really dislikes mushrooms so the fact that he'd choose this recipe surprised me. 

You fry mushrooms and onions, remove them from the pan before frying off the pork, then return the vegetables to the pan to simmer with paprika and a little stock, before stirring through creme fraiche and chopped parsley at the end. The recipe suggests just serving this with "a big pile of greens" (aha, so that's how it's 228 calories a serving!) but I cooked wild rice as well which was a hilarious crash and burn decision with the children. "What are these weird black bits in the rice?" "Are they seeds?" Cue much pushing of food around on the plate and sulking. The stroganoff was ok but not amazing but the wild rice meant that it's not exactly a family favourite. I will persevere.

From the same chapter, I cooked myself "Quick Mexican Eggs" last Sunday morning and ate it as a late breakfast/early lunch on a very hot day with a large iced coffee. John was at work and the kids were having something else so it felt very indulgent and lovely, just cooking this for me.

You cook tinned black beans (drained but not rinsed which adds a wonderful stickiness to them) with garlic, oregano, cumin and tomato puree and leave it to simmer while doing the rest which is an assembly job really; warm a tortilla, fry an egg and make the salsa, which should be avocado dressed with lime juice but I didn't have an avocado so chopped fresh tomatoes and added lime and coriander. 

At the last minute, chuck a handful of spinach into the beans and let it wilt down slightly. 

I cannot say enough good things about those beans; they were delicious, a perfect combination of spice and seasoning and full of flavour. I absolutely loved this meal. It felt like a substantial plate full of food but also light and healthy too.

Finally I made Mango Fool from the "easy peasy puds" (I'm rolling my eyes a little here) chapter. Puree half a mango with lime and dice the other half then whip up double cream and greek yogurt before layering up in a dish. 

It was good, but would have been better if my mango had been riper, but that's my fault for being impatient. But a nice light dessert which, because it was in a pretty glass, felt more exciting to eat than a yogurt.

There is still so much I want to try in this book. There's a lot of inspiration and some really good recipes in here for the price, I just need to avoid wild rice for a while.

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Thank you for your nice comments about the Mollie Makes feature. After a long break from that magazine I've recently started buying it occasionally, and have just had the most wonderful time making one of their projects: a miniature craft room in a suitcase. It captivated me in a way that no project has for a really long time, and I cannot wait to show you all in a blog post soon, a really long one with lots of photos. 

Proper Summer

It's really, really warm today. It has to be well over 30°C and there is no breeze, just a grey, headachy sky. I just popped up to Tescos (wine) and spent much longer in there than necessary enjoying their air conditioning. All the doors and windows at home are wide open and...nothing. I'm sweating just sitting here typing. I know those of you who live in warmer climates are probably laughing at me but the struggle is real. Our homes, schools and offices just aren't built to withstand very warm weather and so we all wilt. (It's like when it snows a tiny bit in the UK and everything grinds to a halt; our transport system and cars are not designed for seriously cold weather and so it's safer just to stay at home, light the stove and drink hot chocolate. Safety first.) I am trying really hard not to complain though because we have been enjoying such beautiful weather over the last month with day after day of warm, sunny weather and hardly any rain.  A storm would be good right now though, for my temper and for the garden which is looking a little parched.  

Poor Ziggy is not coping with the heat. Lethargic all day, he wakes up late at night when it's cool and suddenly needs letting out in the night again. He doesn't know what to do with himself and can't get comfortable on his bed. Our south-west facing bedroom is cool and airy all morning but by the time we go to bed it's an oven, even with the windows and balcony door open to cool it. I sleep with the windows wide open despite the pollen. (Other hayfever sufferers - do you also think this year has been particularly bad?) 

We went down to the beach after school on Friday and I swam in the sea for the first time this year. It was glorious.

The garden is just about holding up in this dry spell, although my erratic watering system probably isn't helping. It's all or nothing. But the sweet peas are slowly climbing and the redcurrants and blackcurrants are almost ready to be picked. I never know what to do with those currants but every year I enjoy thinking about the possibilities. 

I have the most ridiculous Saltwater sandal tan lines on my feet now. How is it that my legs don't really seem to tan but by feet are brown year round? It's getting to the point now where I can't really wear any other shoes but I have a wedding to go to in four weeks and I may need alternative footwear! I love my Saltwaters though. I have three pairs and wear them daily, and they last for years. What other shoes can I wear to work then to swim in the sea after work? Brilliant. 

We're watching a lot of football and I'm quite enjoying it. I'm not a huge football fan but I do like a sporting event where it takes over for a few weeks, like the Olympics or Wimbledon, and you get quite swept up in the whole thing. John says it's really open this year and anyone could win. (Except England, obviously...)

Our fruit intake has rapidly increased in this weather. We've been eating watermelons, mangos and Galia melons like they're going out of fashion, not to mention the British soft fruit season, and it's heavenly. A slice of watermelon, fresh from the fridge, is my current after school snack. We've been barbecuing lots more too, and I have some chicken breasts marinating in the fridge right now in a mixture of white wine, olive oil and herbs. We'll butterfly and grill it, and eat it with a tray of roasted vegetables I put in the oven a while ago. Actually, the kids probably won't eat half of those - I'd better stick a tray of oven chips in too. 

One last thing - something rather lovely happened. Our home is in this months issue (94) of Mollie Makes. I shrieked when I read the email from them as I think they feature really interesting, lovely homes and their home tour is always the first part of the magazine I read before the patterns or anything else. I'm a fan. Anyway...

Right, we need to light the barbecue, and I need to open that bottle of white wine. Have a great week!