How to decorate your cardboard dolls house

Once you have made a basic dolls house from a cardboard box it is time to get creative. I got my toddler involved in the first one below, just painting the background white. We then printed off some wallpapers and floors for a couple of the rooms from Jennifer’s Printables, an extensive source of dolls house stuff.

 

It was all looking great until my husband stuck Pedro the Pony on my Voysey wallpaper.

Download your own free wallpaper from hintyprint

You can now download some exclusive hintyprint wallpaper pdfs from our printables and patterns page.

We have three different designs on offer, a gorgeous Voysey wallpaper from the 1920s – The House that Jack Built, reproduced with kind permission from Trustworth Studios. We have made their full-sized version mini just so it will be cardboard dolls house scale. Be sure to visit their site and check out all the other Arts and Crafts items they have for sale.

Then we have bricks for an exposed brick wall look and mixed tiles for a bathroom or a floor.

Here is a little taster of some decorating inspiration to come in a future post. Literally straight from the pages of Country Life magazine.

 

How to make a cardboard dolls house

Fig.2 How to make a cardboard dolls house

Printable PDF diagram

Here is a diagram which shows how to make a bog standard cardboard dolls house with four rooms and a slightly interesting roof. The most fun you can have with a cardboard box, in my opinion. The stronger the cardboard the better but you will usually find that your horizontal floor needs an extra cardboard floor adding for strength and to stop it sagging. No glue required. No paper fasteners required (though I am trying to find a way to work them in) just slots cut in the walls and the partitions so they fit together.

Check out the printables and patterns section for some free dolls house scale wallpaper to decorate your cardboard house or keep an eye out for future blogs posts with more decorating ideas.

 

Our first dolls house

Back in the day, before we discovered the joy of dolls house structural engineering with cardboard boxes, I was desperate to find something new to do with a cardboard box, and a toddler who had been inside for too long.

Out came the sharpies and a knife to make a little house. It’s pretty good for a younger toddler, at this stage mine was obsessed with putting things in things so on several occasions ALL the toys disappeared in this box.

It’s very quick to make. If you are not 100% confident with your drawing skills (and I am not) have a browse online at some basic illustration. It’s sometimes just good to get a bit of inspiration to start you off. Basic sharpie line drawings can also double up as colouring templates for kids so they can help to decorate the house.

And always build a cat flap. It’s amazing how occupied a 2-year-old stays with a cat flap, or a corgi flap in this instance.