Designer wallpaper

I have been designing my own wallpaper for my little houses. This picture shows my first attempt. Even the ceiling is papered and has a border. Ceiling papers were very common in Victorian times. The fancy parquet floor is also one of my papers.

At first, I was delighted to see the selection of properly scaled wallpapers and floor papers at the local dollhouse store, but after redecorating my $5.00 thrift shop house with $150.00 worth of wall and floor coverings I decided to look around for a less expensive alternative.

As well, I had collected several books on dollhouses and after seeing some of the incredible miniature rooms that artisans have created I found the dollhouse store wallpaper a little dull and ordinary.

I started by doing a google search for dollhouse wallpaper. I found lots of free downloads that looked great, but once downloaded they left something to be desired. Some were low resolution, making them fuzzy when printed. Others were the wrong scale, or the colours were off. After the first few trys I changed my google search to Victorian wallpapers and found a wealth of resources.

Using my background as a graphic designer, I took ideas from the images of the antique wallpaper and created sheets of patterns for my own use. I an quite pleased with the way my first room turned out. The door is also a print out and glued to the wall on a Trompe L'Oeil fashion.

I have always loved Arts and Crafts designs and couldn't resist doing my dollhouse kitchen with the lovely Macintosh rose tiles. The floor and upper wall tile (white) and tin ceiling are from the dollhouse store.

The lovely furniture is artisan-made and was a Goodwill find a few years ago. You can see the discoloration on the table were kitchen items were displayed in some long ago dollhouse.

I will be  furnishing the kitchen  with a stove and accessories once I finish decorating the house. It is proving to be a bigger job than I thought.

I will post more pictures of my wallpaper designs as I complete the rooms.