Seaside Living

I loved working on the living room of this little house. I found a piece of sand-colored embossed felt at the craft store and it inspired the beachy feel of this room. My mother lived on the Bay in Florida for several years and we really enjoyed our time dipping our toes in the sand and watching the waves come in.

Since my mom was responsible for the "bones" of the house, she fashioned a coffered ceiling with moldings (which took FOREVER to fit) and added lights to each opening. My mother already purchased the white couch and chairs at the Museum of Miniature Houses in Carmel, IN. The Lee's Minis Furniture coffee table and fireplace were online purchases which left me time to focus on the accessories.

This room had some odd architectural "features" caused by the supports running along the left and right walls. I decided to place the fireplace on the left/outside wall  and add hearth seating on both sides since I didn't really have room for furniture. I made pillows out of leftover fabrics and a blue sailboat shirt I found at Goodwill.

I made the painting over the fireplace and then added a sailboat I made out of Sculpy. You can barely see it in this picture, but I also made sand dollars out of Sculpy for either side of the mantel. 

I have to admit that I loved working with the Sculpy. When I was in school, I used to sculpt animals so I had to make a whale for the coffee table.

One of my favorite things in this room is the collage. I searched the Internet for ages looking for images that I could size and color to form this collage. The pictures are all just cropped and colored and printed on paper and then glued to foam matting. The mirror I made from a set of star(fish) shaped beads to mimic a real life mirror I saw on Pinterest. The table is a House of Miniatures kit that I modified to fit my wall supports.

One last story to share for this room: I took my daughter and my nephew to Goodwill one afternoon and sent them on a search for mini-sized items that I could use as accessories. They each came back with one item for me to use. My daughter picked a small tourist-y beach souvenir water globe with tiny seashells inside. It was easy to see that I could disassemble it and reuse the shells in this living room. I even made a Sculpy bowl to hold them.

My nephew, on the other hand offered a challenge: he found a set of wooden wall plaques clearly from the 1970s. Each featuring a character (one boy and one girl) holding a wooden pot and a large collection of dried flowers. Hmmm. I took the wooden pots and some of the better preserved flowers to make 2 large floral arrangements to put in the bay window behind the couch. The flowers were too beige to stand out at the back of the room so I dry brushed them, some blues and coral and then a dusting of a sparkly topcoat. Still subtle, but noticeable this time. And another fun family memory for the dollhouse to hold.