Call of the Small

New Website, Goodbye Blogger

I now have a brand new website! You can now find me at www.call-small.com. The site has all of the blog posts that I created on Blogger from 2009 to the present, and of course I'll be adding posts via the new site moving forward.

This change is also to provide more direct access to the creative services offerings of Call of the Small, namely the book cover and editorial project work that I have done over the past few years. I also do rentals and sourcing of modern dollhouse furnishings and accessories, and would like to further develop this.

So, if you've bookmarked me, or otherwise follow my blog, please visit www.call-small.com from now on! I will no longer be posting here on Blogger.

Aug

TOMY Smaller Home and Garden Revamp

If I've learned anything in my years of dollhouse renovating, it's that it is FAR easier to make changes when the house is able to be disassembled. This is not some terrific revelation, but I am always relieved when I can safely take the house apart and gain more complete access to walls and floors. Whenever I am approaching changes to a vintage house, I try to be as sensitive as possible to the original design and features.

Jul

Renovation Progress on the Betsy McCall Dollhouse

I continue to make progress on my Betsy McCall dollhouse, inspired by some new paper purchases from JoAnn Fabrics. I decided that this room would be in grey tones, as a complement to the adjoining rooms, which are in shades of yellow, cream, and grey. I had actually tried to wallpaper the space a few months ago in yellow and white tones, but the paper was way too thin. I loved the patterns but they did not hold up at all with the wallpaper glue.

Jul

Sleep Modern

I renovated another room in my vintage midcentury Betsy McCall house. I have been thinking about this room for a while, and originally thought it would work as a bathroom, but after adding flooring and wallpaper, I decided to furnish it as a bedroom with furnishings from Djeco.

First, here's a few pictures of the room when I first got the house:

I hunted down some durable paper from the Paper Source, and got to work. The flooring paper has a very waxy finish, so that worked well.

Feb

Mini Marilyn

Ever get new goods and feel compelled to use them all in one scene?? That's the deal here.

The setting is the IKEA Lekman storage box, which serves as a great room box. Mine is purple, which is not sold anymore, and I usually need to cover the walls to mask the color and create a more realistic environment.

Brick scrapbook paper does the trick!

I'm very excited about my first items from the very talented Phillip Nuveen: replicas of Eames House birds and a Jeff Koons balloon dog. So. Cool.

Nov

Mies van der Rohe Daybed

This scene is built around the iconic Mies van der Rohe daybed. It is such a fantastic piece. As photographed, the scene looked "sleepy" to me, kind of dreamy. I played with the lighting a bit to try to evoke different moods. I also used the plant in the foreground in some cases, and in others, not. I couldn't decide if it worked or not.

Photographing this scene reminded me of the many hours spent wallpapering this space.

Oct

Productive, on a Large Scale

It's been a long time! I have had a ton of distractions that have prevented me from blogging, but mostly all productive. I have missed communicating with my readers and the larger "mini" community, but the time provided me with some clarity about my collection and its organization -- it's difficult to create scenes and work with your houses when things are in complete disarray.

One huge obstacle was flooding in our basement, which is where my collection lives.

Mar

Hightstown Dollhouse Show: 2016

I'm lucky to have a small and manageable dollhouse show to go to right by my house: the Hightstown Miniature Show, now in its 37th year. This is my fourth year going--I've written about my visits before--and I've now honed my system for visiting and buying.

Here are my tips for this show, and these may apply to other similar traditional shows:

First: SHOW UP LATE. I arrived with only 90 minutes left for the show and it was not crowded and I found a lot of things.

Feb

Cubic Dollhouse by Djeco

I feel like I am on a roll with sharing some new modern dollhouses (I just profiled the new "Loft to Love" house here), so I wanted to send another one your way.

Welcome, Cubic House by Djeco!

I've read that the house was inspired by classic architecture, and I can see a strong resemblance to the De Stijl ("the style") movement, which developed in Amsterdam in the early part of the 20th century. A famous example is the Rietveld Schroeder house, built in 1924.

Jan

Loft to Love Dollhouse

The new Loft to Love dollhouse by Our Generation, still available at Target, is one of the more fun modern structures to come along recently. (Having said this, I must admit that I have not yet cracked open my Cubic House by Djeco, which l believe will be equally as fun, if not more so.)

The house is part of the "Lori" line of 6 inch dolls, so it is scaled for 1:12.

Call of the Small

...where small modern lives large