Tips for Decorating Dollshouses
While not all of us may think it as soon as we buy a dolls house, over time, it’s likely that you’ll want to make a few adaptations which give it a personalised edge. It’s only natural, and it’s a fun thing to do when you’ve got the time on your hands. However, not everyone does, and even when they find the time to do so, they might not know where to start. The whole process is very much trial and error, so you’ll have to really invest some time into it, but that isn’t to say that it has to be an irritatingly drawn out experience. Below, we point you in the direction of a few handy things it’s worth noting, before you go about renovating your little home within a home.
- Have a plan first. It goes without saying, as it’s something that you should really do with most things in your life, but being able to say that you know what you’re doing for every step of the process means that you’ll be able to do a far better job of it. Make the blueprint and the rest should hopefully follow with it.
- Paint. Apply two to three light coats of paint, rather than one, and ensure that your paint suits that surface that it’s going on. You can find guides as to the right plains and gloss that go with certain wood, so ensure that you follow their guidelines.
- Application. Always work light, so that you can go back and make amendments if necessary. If not, you may end up discovering that it’s a lot more difficult to cover up any mistakes that you do along the way.
- Exterior fittings. With brick effects or roofing materials, be sure to give the house a balance (in weight and aesthetics) and simply use PVA glue to put things into place, and you shouldn’t have any issues whatsoever.
- Windows. If you feel as though the windows just aren’t doing the dollhouse justice, you can always replace the current fittings with Perspex. It’s cheap, easy to fit and will last you a while too. That should be what you’re looking for.
Roominate – the Electronic Dollshouse Project
With dolls houses, many people make the assumption that there’s only so far that you can go with them. They have long, ancient traditions that go with them, and it means that there isn’t really all that much room to toy around with it, without upsetting someone along the way. However, a trio of female students felt that they had something to offer; in order to give dolls houses a modern makeover. As engineers aiming to show that it’s not just men who work in that field,and women have a lot to contribute too. Their first plan of action was to create a dolls house which reflects the know-how they’ve garnered – the Roominate. As it’s now on sale with three different products, you could say that it went to plan.
How Roominate came to be is that three graduate students, enrolled in engineering and business courses, turned their attention to the crowd funding site KickStarter. With a vision to raise $25,000 to make an innovative, new dolls house that would be able to inspire more young girls to go to university for science, technology, engineering or mathematics degrees. It was an ambitious ask, but gives young girls the same youthful interest in these types of fields as young boys do, by adding new dimensions to the typical dolls house experience. While they wouldn’t be able to directly link their product to the amount of girls who will potentially do on to study in those fields in the future, it at least gives more of a chance that they can see the vision to do so, and aren’t intimidated by the male-dominated nature of it all.
As you can expect, it went to plan. Within five days, they had their $25,000, and they now actually have a total of $85,965 invested in their Roominate product. The miniature houses can be constructed in whatever way the child likes, and they are able to construct circuits with the electronic fittings. The first release of the Roominate is expected for this December, so the public will have to see whether it’s able to do as is intended of it.
Introducing the Tabeo – The New Kids Tablet
You’re going to hear a lot of talk about “Back in our day” soon, and it’s all because technology is advancing far quicker than ever before. The rate of innovation has been rapid, as of late, and it’s managed to reach absolutely everyone. No age ranges have been left out in any of this, and it’s meant that kids are getting increasingly better at handling the electronic gadget that we throw at them. One example of how it’s being seen in action is with the new Toys ‘R’ Us tablet, dubbed the Tabeo. Directed towards kids, it’s like their version of the iPad, and has parents everywhere wondering just how long before they’ll have to shell out for a device such as this for their little ones.
As far as the features go, you’ll be shocked to find that the Tabeo isn’t too far off what an ‘adult’ version of this would be like. In fact, minus the external ascetics of it, a few tweaks could probably convince anyone of its power to compete with the top performers in the tablet world today. Skimming through the specs, you’ll soon discover that it has a 4GB of memory, it’s pre-loaded with 50 different apps, it has Wi-Fi access, a multi-touch screen, an Android 4.0 operating system, and you get that all for just £94. That’s right – all of that for £100, and it’s directed towards a young audience.
If you believe that all of this sounds a bit too ridiculous to be true, the Toys ‘R’ Us vice president has made a statement to verify what’s going on, and what we can expect to see as the Tabeo hits shelves at the latter end of October. Troy Peterson explains: “Over the past year, we’ve spent considerable time talking to parents and children to determine what features and functions they really want in a kids’ tablet, resulting in Tabeo, We are proud that Tabeo offers robust and flexible parental controls that can help protect children as they surf the Internet, and we are pleased to offer the tabeo App Store, which features only kid-safe content carefully curated by the Toys ‘R’ Us team.”
Top 20 Toys Ever – The Definitive List
Absolutely everyone out there has their own view on what the top toys are. When we’re little, we take for-granted just how many toys we manage to accumulate and the sheer variety of what we receive. It means that a lot of us will end up getting a lot of the same stuff, while others might get a new exclusives that some might never own for themselves. Either way, it makes for a very interesting situation. Once you’ve got such a wide array of different people with different toys, you can never be sure what’s going to come out on top, when you ask them which the best are. The one that you kept to you at night might not be something that other children even had. In some situations, we might have been the only ones not to get the most popular toy of one summer, so where does that leave us.
To settle things, the president and CEO of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis asked for people around the world to vote on what their favourite toy was. People from Canada, Germany, Israel and even Australia managed to have their say, so all corners of the globe were represented. What happened from there may shock you. After being asked what everyone’s favourite toy is, a top 20 list has been compiled that brings together all the top picks for toy consumers around the world, and it’s an extremely curious array of products.
After all of this anticipation, we bet that you just can’t wait to scroll down and find out where your favourite came. Three, two, one… go for it:
- G.I. Joe.
- Transformers.
- LEGO.
- Barbie.
- View-Master.
- Bicycle.
- Cabbage Patch Kids.
- Crayons.
- Play-Doh.
- Monopoly.
- Ragedy Ann.
- Spirograph.
- Etch A Sketch.
- Little Golden Books.
- Hot Wheels.
- Lincoln Logs.
- Candy Land.
- Roller Skates.
- Silly Putty.
- Mr. Potato Head.
If this is the first that you heard about this poll, make sure your voice is heard and you say your favourites too.
The Return of the Retro Toys
We might not really notice it, but we all have a very big impact upon our children’s’ tastes in toys. We might say that we keep out of all that, and that they form independent opinions over what they like, what they tend to ask for and what they end up owning, we all want them to share the same love that we had for our old toys. You can count that as the primary reason as to why we’ve seen such a resurgence in the popularity of retro toys. They’re rapidly on the increase among kids who weren’t around for the first wave, but whose parents chose to introduce them to their old favourites.
One of the most significant happenings of 2012 which hinted on a retro breakthrough was when Furbys began making a return. A one of the top toys from the late ‘90s, it was sure to make another splash, but meant that other toys from the past didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to get in on the retro fun either. A notable inclusion in the list of returning favourites are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, whose brand has been relaunched with a new CGI-animated Nickelodeon series. They are just a mere portion of the overall return back towards the past though, as so many other things from decades long gone are making their way back up in wishlists.
Another example of something which has seen a big boost in popularity is the old fashioned dolls house. You can’t go wrong with something as classic as these. The doll’s house is able to transcend eras effortlessly, as it’s able to connect with many different generations. It doesn’t have to move on with the times, because all kids just get it, and it’s as simple as that. The doll’s house is able to bridge gaps, and does so in ways which others aren’t capable of. For proof, just browse through GLTC’s range of new kid’s toys and what’s becoming popular again. This fits in with the overall trend of a return towards wooden toys, which parents are especially happy about, considering the fact that they tend to be far cheaper.
