COUNTRY houses are very attractive, even the toy ones possess a certain charm. Here is a great, big, beautiful, country doll house for the doll people to live in. It has window shutters to open and close, doors that will open and shut, and the doors have little door knobs like real ones. Each room has a different, colored frieze around the walls, and the floor of the living-room is covered with a handsome rug. All the windows are curtained, and the house is ready to furnish. You can make any and all kinds of furniture with empty spools of different sizes and pieces of pasteboard cut in various ways. As a hint, just to show how easily the furniture is made, glue a round piece of pasteboard on top of
Fig. 424.—Front and right-hand side cut from box.
A Large Spool
and you will have a pretty little table; paint it a red brown to resemble mahogany. If you need more suggestions, spool furniture may be found in “What a Girl Can Make and Do.”
Fig. 425.—Second box with corners left on front.
To make the doll house. Get three stiff pasteboard boxes about fourteen inches long, thirteen inches wide and six and one-half inches high ([Fig. 423]). Cut the thirteen-inch front and the right-hand side from the first box ([Fig. 424]). Take the second box and lay the fourteen-inch front down flat on top of an old, common wooden table which can be used without fear of injury, and with the aid of a ruler, draw two straight lines across the front on the inside of the box; let each line be about one and one-fourth inch from the side. Keep the box as it is while you score the lines with a sharp penknife; then cut out the front, leaving the upright pieces to form the corners at each end ([Fig. 425]). Cut the thirteen-inch front and left-hand side from the third box ([Fig. 426]). Mark two high windows ([Fig. 427]) on the inside, near the front of the left side of the first box ([Fig. 424]). Make each window two and one-half inches high and two and one-half inches wide, leaving a space of three-fourths of an inch between them. Lay this left side of the box flat down on the table and use the sharp penknife to score the dotted lines and cut the heavy lines. Always cut and score from the inside of the box, otherwise the shutters will turn inward.