Building a Miniature Library

I've always wanted a doll's house. I love doing time consuming things that have a beautiful results (doing jigsaws, colouring in post cards, for example). No need to mention I love books. Of course, Facebook and co know all about me, so the targeted marketing for Robotime's miniature DIY houses hit bull's eye when they appeared on my feed.

My order arrived a few days earlier than I expected, which made the joy a little bigger yet when I unpacked the box, that already looked gorgeous from the outside. And then I was confronted with about a thousand parts - shelves, furniture, paintings and books to be! Look at all that detail!

First things first: painting the walls and laying the floor. 

Next step: electricity. I am not a handy woman, so I was VERY sceptical if the light would work. I had to connect 4 miniscule LED-lamps with the thinnest wire you can imagine, shrink the isolation around it with the help of a lighter, connect those tiny wires to other wires in about four seperate steps. Not to mention the chandelier was just a couple of bendable metal strands that had to be cut, bent and pasted into a lamp's form.

I couldn't test the light until it was completely finished...

And then there was light!! I was sooo happy. Next were the furniture: six shelves, a sofa, a stool and a ladder. 

We're about 12 hours under way now, spread over six days. Even though the furniture is tiny, it's big and easy to work with compared to the decoration that is next up on the plan. First step: the flowers. 

Now the lovely works of art I am doing it all for: the books! I've to admit, I already tried a couple in between working on the furniture, but now the big heap was on. 107 books or book combinations in total, to be cut out, folded and pasted into the right form. That also meant smoothen 84 pieces of wood with miniature sandpaper. The last step I worked through - before assembling the whole - were the paintings. And what a lovely suprise to find an illustration of Anton Pieck in there, too! 

All loose items finished, time to create a library! 

And because I love all those marvelous details so much, here's a bunch of close-ups. 

Want to walk through one last time? This was so much fun to do. It took me about 24 hours in sum, in a little less than two weeks. I'm happy the weather was steady and warm during all that time, because we were forced to have our meals on the balcony since I had been blocking the dinner table during the process! 

This mini library has now found a special place on my book shelf, it happily sits next to my collection of Jane Austen novels.