The attic was a lot of fun. I’ve seen other miniaturists’ attics with newspaper wallpaper, and I wanted to do something similar. I took images from newspapers online, resized and printed sheets on two shades of parchment paper I had in my stash from my old art school days. The subtle translucent quality and the mottled coloration added a lot of realism.
Then came the task of cutting out each individual page of newsprint so I could apply the paper piece by piece.
Once the attic floor was in place (in the photo below, you can see the pieces of strip wood I used to brace the divider), I glued beams along the walls, leaving 1 1/2″ between them. I then coated the wood beams with a black and brown wash.
I used the individual newspaper pieces to cover the sections between the beams, mashing the paper, gluing wrinkles in place and turning some corners down.
I love the way this turned out! :D
I used the same process on the ceiling portion of the attic and added some water spots with a brown paint wash.
I had these books from a lot of furniture and accessories I bought from craigslist and covered them with covers I found on printmini.com, printed on parchment paper.
I placed one book in the room below and rest into a purchased crate that I aged with paint washes. The hurricane lamp is by Clare Bell Brass aged with brown paint. Its cord is hidden under the crate. This is a tiny room, but leaving it dark meant you couldn’t see the details I added.
I love it!!!! :D And, the great thing about this room is that the older and dustier it gets over the years, the more realistic it will look.
Update from 2012: In addition to the light coating of dust from the past two years, the barn has apparently attracted the attention of small spiders — as barns are apt to do. There is a fine covering of webs inside the top of the barn by the lights.
Quite marvelous, don’t you think? :D It’s interesting to me since the lights aren’t often on and they wouldn’t really attract insects of any sort besides, but this is exactly where spiders would congregate in a real life barn — the perfect place to catch any insects attracted to the lights.
They aren’t shown in this photo, but the webs continue under the slight lip of the roof outside this wall, too. I suppose someday I’ll have to dust the house and remove the webs when they become overwhelming, but not yet.
