Barbie house plans?

[Janie]

I wish I would have seen this thread sooner, my daughter ordered one from Penneys last week for the two granddughters for Christmas. It is 5 feet tall and wood and looks pretty sturdy. It is back ordered until the end of this month and the accessories until the end of Nov. but guarenteed to come before Christmas so hope does. I did a search and found a site with one made of the plastic shelves, but you had to become a member (free though) to get any more info. My daughter did, but no pictures and she couldn't get the idea from the information. I'm going to check out the furniture site. I have some plastic canvas patterns I got in a clearance sale for a bedroom set, picnic set-including food, school room and will see what the accessories include before I make anything else. We are thinking about crocheting some granny squares for bedspreads/afghans or making some "quilts" and some other stuff like rugs, but I think it would have been fun to do the whole thing from scratch. Maybe you can share some pictures when you get done. Janie

[Shelly9963]

Jen (Jen143):

Do you remember what magazine you got it out of or did you just use a generic plastic shelving unit?

I loved the bookcase idea, but my daughter's bookcase doesn't have enough room to stand a doll up in (between the shelves).

My daughter loves Barbies but the "houses" out there for them are very expensive. Even on ebay they aren't cheap, although they are cheaper than the brand new out of box version at the store.

Thanks,
Shelly

[jen143]

Shelly,

I want to say it was Family Fun magazine.

I just used an off white plastice shelving unit that I got at Walmart. We glued cardbord onto the back of one long side and used that for the back wall. You could do it on the sides to, but the girls like to get at it from the front and the sides. We just used paint (with sponging and taping off techniques), and scrap fabric for "window treatments (I cut out a few windows using a premeasured template made out of cardboard and we put up curtains that matched the bed spread and table cloth.) We painted to outside too, though that's more b/c my dd likes to paint. It's up against the wall so that side isn't seen. We used two different rug samples pieces that we got at Home Depot for rugs by cutting them down and I put white glue on the edges to help them from fraying. We have more rug is we need to replace it. We also got a border for a dollar to. I put it down the middle of one "room" and painted top and bottom and on the bottom of the kitchen area and painted the top part to match. All in all, a better house than the store bought ones b/c my dd got to help in the decorating and knows that we can change things too! My other dd is getting into it now too and they play so nice when they play barbies now!

If you need any more tips let me know and good luck with your shelf house if you choose to do it!

[Shelly9963]

Jen:

Thanks so much for the info. Yes, I hope to do this for my daughter, maybe for Christmas. The hard part will be keeping her from seeing it till I get it finished. Thanks for the info.

Shelly