24 April, 2005:

For starters, some pictures of the office chair I posted to Marjukka. This is the second one I made (the first one is in my latest roombox, and unfortunately I didn't have any more foamcore, so I used balsa wood and more padding instead, which doesn't look as good, and messed with the balance a little bit.

The white plastic parts are from one of those plastic "mini tables" you get with large delivery pizzas, holding the pizza box lid off the toppings.. So, they're not only great instant tables, you can also make chairs of them! I cut most of the legs off, leaving little stumps only. I then hot-glued silver beads on the stumps, for wheels.
I used one cut-off leg between the seat and the wheel part (this leg had to be cut a little shorter, or the chair would have ended up being too high), and another leg to connect the back part to the seat.
I cut pieces of balsa wood for the seat and back part, padded with some cotton wool, and covered with fabric. You can pretty much figure out from the photos, how it's made.


And now.. to the "Hubby Swap"!
No, no.. We didn't all ship off our men, the idea was to make something for the men in our dollhouses! You'll see my complete set later on, I'll start with some pictures of individual parts of my swap entry.

Credit cards! Surely it's good for the man of the house to keep those well hidden, to keep the missus from buying all kinds of unnecessary things.. (A stereotype? Nooo..?!) I collected credit card pictures from various sites, then reduced them to dollhouse scale, and printed them out with my photo printer. I cut the cards to the right shape - a little bit off the corners - and glued a back and front picture against each other. This did make them too thick for the scale, but had I tried to shave them thinner before gluing, I'd still be at it..
As they were going to Finland, I made everyone a Nordea VISA card. The two different cards on lower right, were an extra for Elina who organised the swap. One of the regular cards is turned upside down, so you can see the back picture, too.

And here's a 1c coin for scale comparison..

My first thought for the swap was a newspaper - well, actually it was my second thought, because I had a feeling someone else might be making the stuff I first thought I'd make.. (that remains to be seen as I haven't yet received the swap items - in fact, I think my items will only reach Elina tomorrow or so..)
Anyway, I originally thought I'd make a newspaper and some change, so the doll man could have been to the newsagents and gotten some change back, but I couldn't find my punch tool anywhere, so I had to forget making coins..
I made the newspaper especially for this swap, so it's in Finnish, and you could translate its name as "Swap News", or maybe "Swap Times".. And yes, although the text can not be read in such a tiny size, I actually DID type proper articles and news on the front and last pages! The photography is my own, too. I might release the paper as printables someday.. we'll see.

Printed on both sides, the paper has eight pages..

I bent them once, so they'd appear more like the papers you see in the shops.. Some fashion dolls on the last page.. I meant to do a page 3 girl, but then I made something else instead.. *keep reading*

A neat bunch of freshly printer newspapers..

(No, I didn't lose a finger..)

Pin-up girls! Since the doll men had to use a credit card, they could not get just a paper, so they bought some glamour cards as well.. I went for some vintage pin-ups as I didn't want to send any actual nudity. All these pin-ups have top and bottom covered!

Everyone gets the same four cards..

So, here's the complete set for the swap.

Close-up..

All ten sets, packed and ready to go..

Some extras for Elina (in addition to those two extra credit cards) - some of my mini photography for possible dollhouse albums, and some funky foam punch-outs.