Dear Chibi,

About 2 months ago, I started building a little doll house, which I primarily worked on during my lunch break or down time. This personal side project came about when Robbie put the kit on my desk and asked if I wanted it. He had it lying around his desk for years and wanted to throw it away, so I happily accepted it without knowing what I was getting myself into… Not until I opened it anyway! It turns out the instructions were all in Japanese… and I don’t have the slightest clue when it comes to building things! Determined to make it happen, I went into an Art Supplies store and bought some glue and brushes. After many hours of trial and error, google translating, blu-tacking, taping, cutting, dissolving resin pellets and gluing… we have our finished product!!

TADAAAAAA :D

It has a garden and everything!! wooo! And now… here are some work in progress pics:

The front page of the manual~ None of the parts were labelled so I had to measure all the dimensions and match them up.

The raw materials

See the tiny bottle of soya sauce? It’s actually brown paint, or literally translated as “Stain Tea” XD

I wasn’t very confident with gluing everything together right away, so I used blutack to stick them together to make sure it was right. (Probably wasn’t the best idea as I took a long time removing it!)

Painting the wooden pieces. I made the mistake of not figuring out which parts actually needed painting and wasted too much of the ink ^^” There wasn’t enough for everything.

I cut up pieces of brown paper for the wallpaper and laid out the mat/floorboards.

I cut out all the windows/doors and stuck them on a white foam to make them pop-out a bit.

The kit comes with a cute cat, fish bowl and a separator (?)

Unraveling the rope and making the roof. This was probably the most painful and time consuming part of it all. I also made some mistakes with the measurements and didn’t realise I was supposed to straighten out the hay by dampening it in water. Now we have a curly roof 8D

I used my desk drawer tray to hold all my remaining materials. Looks like a bento box, doesn’t it?

Adding the details on the roof~

Chopping up sticks and tying white thread around them all before gluing them to the house. I also made a little ‘bow’ for the front.

Those orange balls are supposed to be persimmons ^^”

Dissolving resin pellets with boiling water and molding them to make radishes

..and the house is done!!

Complete with a garden :)