Doll Divas - Diorama Portfolio

DIORAMA DISCUSSION: Go Hawaiian!

Posted by Marna on July 24, 2007, 8:55 am
Message modified by administrator Dee July 24, 2007, 8:59 am

Hello Divas & Divos! Glad you could join me today. I’ve been asked to tell you how I put together my Hawaii room, so I’ll get right to it. Special thanks to DeeinNJ who posted this for me while I’m at work. If you have any questions, just post them & I’ll answer everyone when I get home from work tonight.

To start with, here are a couple of pictures of the room just to remind you what it looks like.

The couch, bench, & wooden side tables are all by Weaver’s Upholstery (http://www.weaversupholsterytoo.com/) and were the beginning of the room. It’s also where I had to think up my first trick. The bench is made to lean against a wall, it has no back. I decided I liked how the couch looked against the wall instead. That meant I had to figure out a way to make the bench work like a couch. I took 2 pieces of clear packaging tape (one about an inch longer than the other) & stuck the sticky sides together. Then I just stuck this against the back of the bench. This was enough to hold the pillows in place. Just tell your girls not to lean back. Here’s what it looks like from the back, you have to look closely to see the tape.

I’m going to talk a little about the wall, window, & shutters now.

I’ve had the wall up for a while; it’s just a piece of foamboard. I cut out the space for the windows & covered it in contact paper. I can’t cut a straight piece of foamboard to save my life, but I discovered that you can sand it & that made all the difference. Just use medium sandpaper & don’t press too hard & you can get nice straight lines. Also, an emery board is great for sanding nice sharp corners. I just taped a piece of non glare acrylic to the back for the window, put a picture behind that & used museum putty to hold it to the wall.

The shutters are the easiest things in the world to make. I found a picture of a shutter I liked at http://www.diyshutters.com/ShutterStyles.HTM I saved it, resized it, printed it, cut it out & glued it to a piece of cardboard like this:

FRONT:

BACK:

To attach it I used my all purpose remedy for everything, museum putty. I just put a couple of blobs of it on the edge of the window & stuck the shutter against it. I left them at an angle to give it a little more depth.

If you decide to make a window, and you want to use glass or plastic, I highly recommend using the anti glare type. When you take a picture of it, you’ll actually get to see what’s behind the glass instead of white glare. It barely reflects the light at all.

I “made” a few pieces of furniture for the room. This dresser was a Fashion Fever dresser I repainted with a couple of side chairs that I covered in contact paper that looks like suede.

This is the bar, which started out as a kitchen sink from a Gloria playset, also repainted. I used the tops from 2 sample size hairsprays which I painted silver for the legs.

This piece I made using a couple of trinket boxes for the bottom & 3 business card holders (I broke one side off of the middle one) for the top half.

The entire thing is stuck together using museum putty, so nothing is permanent & I can change it around if I want. This is what the back looks like; you can get a better idea of how it’s assembled.

Now for the lamps & lighting. I made 2 kinds of lamps using some of the same supplies, this is everything I used:

The acrylic blocks are normally used for stamping. The sizes I used are 1 inch square, & 1 X 1 ½ inch rectangle. These blocks come in all different sizes, & you can find them by searching on eBay for acrylic block under the stamping category. Some come with beveled edges, so you can get different looks. For the taller lamps, I just used one rectangle block for the base, & randomly glued square ones on top. I used GemTac glue because it dries clear. After that had completely dried, I glued a 2 inch nail with a large flat head on the top to hold up the shade. The shades came from a Gloria playset, & I didn’t have to do a thing to them except put a little museum putty inside to hold them on the nail tip. I think you could probably get some interesting looks by painting the tops of the square blocks before you glue them and/or putting them in a straight column. For the smaller lamp, I used another 1 x 1 ½ block topped by a square block you can’t see. The beige base is a napkin ring I painted with the same textured paint from the furniture. I just put this on top of the bottom block, & glued a 1 ½ inch nail to the square block inside. I cut a piece of beige scrapbook paper & pushed it down over the nail to cover up the inside of the napkin ring. I used blue scrapbook paper to make the shade, I just cut a long piece, & then folded so the long sides are 1 ½ inches & the shorter sides are 1 inch. I left a little extra on one side to glue it. Finally I cut a small strip of blue paper approximately 2 inches long & ¼ inch wide & made a small hole in the middle with a nail. I folded the edges so that it fit length wise inside the shade & glued it. When it dried, I put in on the nail that was glued to the base.

I topped the nail tip off with a jewelry finding thing (no idea what it is) which I had glued a couple of Swarovski flatback crystals onto.

To give the illusion that the lamps could actually light, I used Lemax miniature spotlights. I hid the battery box behind the couch & put a spotlight behind each lamp pointing up at the shade. This is a side view of what it looks like:

Very simple. The spotlight is small enough that you can’t see it from the front of the lamp. I also used these spotlights to highlight the artwork:

The wires are going down behind the pictures so they’re not very visible.

The coffee table:

The base of the table came with candle in it. I removed the candle, turned the top upside down to use as a base (it’s stuck together with my good friend museum putty) then I filled the basin with sand & shells. I used the glass from a picture frame for the top.

Odds & ends: The plates & cups are mostly Re-Ment, the stones vases are from eBay seller jeffspera, the artwork is just paintings I found on eBay or Google that I printed & glued to black foamboard. They’re held up by museum putty. The rug is the same contact paper that is on the side chairs, I put it on a piece of cardboard, and you can find the fish statue by searching for Yujin fish on eBay.

I have this room & my Kenmore kitchen permanently on display. This is what they really look like. They are on 2 built in shelves. As you can see, they’re not that big, it’s all the details that give the illusion of size.

I hope you enjoyed this & maybe picked up some ideas for your own dioramas.