Making Dolls House Furniture in 1:48 Scale by Fiona Broadwood

Petite Properties Fiona Broadwood has created a good clear booklet of instructions for anyone who wants to create inexpensive 1:48 scale furniture. Well photographed, easy to follow steps show how basic assembly and finishing techniques can be put to good use to create a wide range of furniture using papers and art supplies. The techniques discussed will lead beginners quickly to adapt the projects to their own particular designs and finishes. The booklet contains a classic range of furnishings which can be adapted to many styles and quarter scale dolls house projects.

Fiona Broadwood's booklet on Making Dolls House Furniture in 1:48 Scale has been written with an eye to the people who build her 1:48 scale range of cottage kits. The thirty-eight page booklet contains eighteen furniture projects, all based on medium and lightweight card or foam core and artist's craft materials, shown finished in a gently worn country style suited to her Petite Properties cottage kits in the same scale. The range includes two different styles of British cook stoves, one with a fire created by an LED. To complete the kitchen there are a trestle or gate leg table and a kitchen dresser or cabinet. There are chests, wardrobes, shop furniture and bedroom furniture, including a 'half tester' bed and great suggestions for making bed linens and blankets to dress the beds. Two 'fabric covered' sofas are included.

Skills and Tools Required

No project requires any woodworking skills or tools. They are all very realistic, in scale, and easily made with inexpensive materials, mainly card stock (lightweight similar to a greeting card or file folder, and heavier weight similar to a cereal box). When looking at the photographs it is very hard to realize that most of these pieces of 'furniture' are under 1 1/2 inches in size. Most are based on simple rectangular cuts of lightweight card, and clear plans and well illustrated assembly instructions walk you through the steps to build them. Although Fiona shows them all with an aged dry brush finish to match those she suggests in her house kits, the furniture could be finished in a range of finishes and styles. The pieces are shown finished in various positions, with doors open or closed, or table legs unfolded or folded. None of the drawers are made to be opening in this scale.

Availability and Price

Petite Properties sell their houses and kits at many large dolls house shows and fairs in the UK. Fortunately for the rest of us, the kits are also available from them online. The cost for this booklet is roughly $14 including postage (depends on the current exchange rate).

Note: as the book is written for the UK market there may be one or two confusing terms in the text. When 'a flat rubber' is suggested placed beneath parts while you make pin holes, the 'rubber' in question is a flat pencil eraser.