Welcome to a Human Bean's Mini Blog!

"Human beans are for Borrowers - like bread's for butter!”

The Borrowers and Miss Hickory were among my favorite books growing up. The idea of using BIG things to serve as functional objects in a tiny world was and still remains fascinating to me. I became interested in minis and dollhouses when my Grandma purchased two house kits when I was 12 and we spent many weekends working together to assemble and decorate them. Fast forward 40 years and I find myself drawn back to the craft as a hobbyist. I am by no means an expert nor a high level craftswoman, but I wanted to document my journey in this hobby for my own satisfaction of documenting (hopefully) my growth in skills and knowledge. Also, as I started down this path I had so many questions, so hopefully I can leave a few breadcrumbs to help those on their own pathway to mini satisfaction. So I hope you find as much joy in this blog as I have in creating it!

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Greenleaf's Pierce 3: The Pierce Staircase - Keep or Ditch?

I've heard many people say that the Pierce staircase is one of the most challenging dollhouse staircases. Aside from assembly, the way it connects the first and second floors creates "dead" space in the dollhouse. Some of this area can't be accessed nor seen after assembly from the back opening nor from the windows. If you are a purist, you will still want to decorate this area. However, be forewarned...any decoration must be done before the second floor is permanently installed! Window view of 2nd floor landing and attic ladder. Some people decide to eliminate the staircase all together to have a larger area in the downstairs. Some people decide to use custom spiral staircases to save space and still have a way for their small people to access the 2nd floor. Others use the staircase, but relocate it to another part of the room to change the shape of the first floor layout. Yet others will embellish the staircase by customizing it with shelving or adding a closet. I

Pierce Dollhouse Winner

Congratulations to Jackie K. Of Angola for winning the Pierce Dollhouse! Drawing was done by Betty of the Grape Festival headquarters at 3pm on Sunday, September 18th.

Greenleaf's Pierce 5: Floor Treatments

In previous posts I've discussed how many choices there are in building and decorating a dollhouse. Flooring has no fewer choices, possibly even more than other decorating areas. Similarly, materials used in dollhouse flooring are vastly varied as well. Flooring needs to be chosen with scale in mind. The Pierce is 1:12 scale, also known as 1:1 scale, meaning 1 inch in the dollhouse equals 12 inches or 1 foot in real life. So wood grain in any floor material needs to be in scale as well. In other word, you can't really use a whole tile of self-sticking faux wood vinyl floor for a real house in a dollhouse because the scale of the wood's grain will be off. Some materials that translate scale well are: popsicle or craft sticks in regular and jumbo size, coffee stir sticks, adhesive wood veneer, faux stone adhesive floor tiles, air dry paper clay bricks or stone, cardboard egg carton stones, designs printed on computer paper, just scoring floorboards in the plywood floor, a

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