Book Review and Giveaway DIY Dollhouse

Build and Decorate a Toy House Using Everyday Materials

Alexia Henrion

$24.95

DIY dollhouse is book for grownups and little ones and everyone in between. Don’t be confused by the Childlike structure. This book is about Design, Creativity and Architecture.

D.I.Y. Dollhouse is a lavishly illustrated guide for budding architects, builders, and designers, showing then how to build and furnish their own eco-friendly dollhouse, with an incredible eye for detail. The simple instructions cover everything children (and parents) need to get started, from making rooms out of crate boxes and pieces of scrap fabric to crafting countless furniture and household items using recycled materials, such as empty plastic containers and bottles, bottle caps, cardboard boxes, plastic trays, drinking straws, and more. Learn how to transform these easy-to find household items into a sofa, bunk bed, desk chair, fridge, stove, bucket and mop, or even a hot tub for the rooftop garden, and come up with ideas of your own. The photographs of the finished interiors provide plenty of inspiration, and the project is sure to keep crafty children busy for days on end. (Source)

We know you are going to fall in love with this book as much as we have.

Thanks to Princeton Architectural Press we are giving 3 lucky readers the chance to get their hands on this book. For your chance to win comment below and tell us what color you are going to make the front door of your house.

Open Worldwide and closes October 15th. Winners will be contacted via e-mail at the close of the giveaway.

Hanukkah is a great reason to pull out your cross stitch fabric and thread and stitch up some fun seasonal cross stitch patterns.

If you have trouble spelling Hanukkah (I know I do!) you’ll want to stitch up the How Do You Spell… project from SKB Cross Stitch Design. This one includes a bunch of different ways to spell the holiday, along with some symbols like a dreidel and menorah. (Technically I think all the ways to spell it are “correct.”) The pattern includes full, fractional and bask titches, and measures 8.5 by 7 inches, or 21.6 by 17.8 cm. It has the date for 2004/5785 but you can easily change the year or leave that part off.

Another project with some fun word play is the Words to Live By chart from Sam Brie Stitches. This one includes Hanukkah related symbols and word presented crossword puzzle style, which is fun to stitch and to display. The design uses 10 colors and measures 74 by 103 stitches. It’s shown worked on 18 count fabric.

I may have shared these before, but the Hanukkah patterns from the Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery are so cute they’re definitely worth sharing again. Happy Hanukkah features a menorah, dreidels, gelt, stars and candles, and it fits in a 6-inch hoop. At 75 by 75 stitches, it comes out to 5.4 inches/13.4 cm on 14 count Aida or 28 count linen. They also have this cute little dreidel stamp cross stitch pattern, which is 39 by 49 stitches, or 2.8 by 3.5 inches (about 7 by 9 cm) on 14 count Aida or 28 count linen.

Works By ABC has a lot of great patterns for Hanukkah, but here are just a couple to get you started. The Rules for Dreidel design is fun for kids and adults and shows the different sides of the dreidel and what it means when you land on them. The stitch count is 62 by 94 and its shown worked on 32 count linen. It calls for three colors. I also like this menorah one, which measures 44 by 49 stitches and uses two colors along with coordinating seed beads. On 32 count linen as shown (equivalent to 16 count Aida) it measures 2.75 by 3.1 inches, or almost 7 by 7.8 cm.

Have you read?