Crafty Crafty: One Day Barbie House

The peanut has been playing with Barbies quite a bit. I contemplated buying an appropriately-sized dollhouse for her/them, but the houses are really really big and I was not sure if it was worth the investment. When I was a kid, though, my mom fashioned Barbie houses for my sister and I out of some moving boxes, so I decided to get creative.

I had some leftover used banker boxes from when we moved, which are not really big enough, but work sufficiently.

I took some foam board scraps from my cornice project, and some random carpet foam my mom passed along to me.

And with the help of some generous amounts of duct tape (left over from a different project that didn’t work, but we won’t talk about that now), I made a new house for Barbie!

I made enough furniture that the purpose of each room was evident, and I used scrapbook paper as wallpaper. P.S. Mod Podge works great as wallpaper glue, if you’re a Barbie.

I sewed some basic sheets and pillows and crafted beds out of a combination of foam board and wood scraps from Hubby’s basement project. Also: it’s amazing what a coat of acrylic paint will do to the aforementioned materials. The nice thing about sewing for dolls is the minimal amount of fabric needed. I was able to make the beds for the little girls out of scraps from my “scrappy scraps” container—stuff that’s too small to do much else with. I let the Peanut help pick out the materials for the sheets.Here’s a bed. The legs and headboard are made of 2x4 scraps (I didn’t cut any wood for this project; I was too lazy. The pieces are all salvaged and used as-is) and the rest of the bed is insulating foam. I made the mattress of carpet foam.The girls in their beds. Notice the fancy blankets—you’ve gotta love fleece, which doesn’t even need a hem!And Barbie likes to spend time in her living room on her fancy couch. This fabric gives you a sneak peek of another project that I’ve finished, but not yet blogged about.Barbie watches PBS.

The TV table is fancy and is made entirely of wood—and hot glue. The television is all foam, glue, and paint.

The kitchen looks pretty homemade (and thanks to hubby for cutting a chain link in half for me so the refrigerator doors could have handles), but I think it will work. Barbie spends most of her time playing with her daughters and asking them if they need to go to the restroom, and not too much time cooking. The kitchen sink and oven/stove are two 2x4s glued together with a piece of mat board for the backsplash. Everything is drawn on (I heart the silver Sharpie!) save the range knobs, which are sew-on buttons from my notions drawer. The fridge is a 2x4. There’s also a striped table, which you can see in the very last picture. It was a lid to a container I had, and I painted dowel rods and attached them as legs. I’ll probably have to make chairs at some point, but that hasn’t been an issue yet.

I didn’t have to make anything for the bathroom—the Peanut already had a sink and toilet that came with one of her Barbies, so I threw in a plastic container to act as a bathtub and called it a day.