Age: this art activity is suitable for toddlers and older children
Time: anything from about 1 hour

This is one of those great open-ended projects that can go on for as long as you like or can be revisited again and again whenever you are looking for something to fill the time. The dollshouse idea can be adapted to a hospital, shop etc., depending on you or your child’s preferences.

You will need:

• 2 or 3 shoeboxes or small boxes of a similar size
• Lifestyle magazines with pictures of furniture etc.
• black marker/ pen
• Glue
• Paint or markers
• Material (such as scrap cloth/ carpet etc. – whatever is to hand)
• Scissors

The example we are using here is of a 3-story house so get three shoeboxes ready. On all three draw a square shape for a window on the 2 opposing small sides of the box (or the back of the box as in the example shown). You can either cut out this square for the windows or cut down the center and across the top and the bottom giving the effect of window shutters. A mixture of both of these is nice, maybe shutters on the bottom floor and full cut-out windows on the other two.

Where you have used shutters use the black marker to draw a series of horizontal lines across the shutter doors from top to bottom. You can colour them first if you like.

Now that your windows are all in place you need to paint/ colour the walls and floors of your dollshouse. I think it is more fun (although slightly more awkward) to put the house together first as it feels more like decorating a real house (this is all about me remember – what kids??!) .

To put the house together put the shoeboxes on top of each other with the open top facing towards you. Once you are happy with the position glue the boxes into place. If you have a lid from any of these boxes it can provide a good support for the house by glueing it to the back at floor level, this will act as a stabilizer.

Let the glue dry (according to instructions as the drying time for each glue will vary). Now comes the fun part – decorating!

Paint is easier and more effective for the large areas like the outside of the house so mix up some nice vibrant colours. In the example in the picture we used different colours for each level of the house and included stripes and lots of vibrant colours. Remember to leave this up to the kids and let them paint the whackiest colour-scheme they want. You will have to restrain yourself from interfering in this and believe me – it is not easy!

While the exterior of the house is drying you can make a start on the ’soft-furnishings’. You can be as elaborate as you like here, curtains, rugs and even a table-cloth if you so desire, and I have a funny feeling you will! For the curtains you really just need to cut out 2 squares a slightly bigger size than the window. Put a piece of string (over twice the width of the window) along the top of the square of material. Fold some material over the string and glue in place (you may need to put a weight on it to make sure it sticks together when drying), do this with both squares to make the pair of curtains. This will form the ‘curtain rail’. To put in place you can put 2 small holes either side of the top of the window and feed the string through tying it on the outside of the house (you can paint over this later). You can elaborate further on this by making little ties for the curtains and tying them back.

You can either paint the floors of your house or use extra bits of carpet cut to size for that added luxury! If you only have little bits of materials then cut some rectangular floor rugs. For the walls I like to cut out lots of paintings from the backgrounds of lifestyle magazines (those ones with showpiece rooms), you can cut out lamps, tables, wardrobes and lots more and stick them to the appropriate wall in your house.

You can then fill the house with dollshouse furniture and whatever little figures will fit. You can add to this house again and again. We have so far added a garage at the back in the shape of another small shoebox (from a first pair of shoes – aww!), a ladder made out of lollipop sticks and a roof garden (an upturned shoebox lid!).

Please post your comments on this as it is a limitless project so all ideas and experiences are welcome!