Dandridge House Dolls

    I have a lot of historical dolls as you all know by now but what I don’t share often is my modern dolls. I thoroughly love my historical dollhouses but sometimes it’s fun to work with current styles and design. This summer hubs and I started a five-room dollhouse for the Truly Me dolls of my collection. In my post American Girl Place Chicago you got to meet Ella and Emma. They are my two Truly Me 61’s that I dress as twins.

The modern dollhouse is to be Ella and Emma’s home and has two floors. The top floor consists of three rooms: Emma’s Bedroom, Ella’s Bedroom and a shared Walk-In Closet. This house is the first of my houses to feature real doorways leading into other rooms. My historical rooms are complete without any sort of pass through.

As I started designing the twin’s bedrooms, I wanted them to have very different themes and personalities. I chose to create a personality for Emma as a girl who is trendy, smart and loves to read. Her room is simple, clean and has her favorite things near. Emma’s bookshelves are filled with lots of American Girl books and her camera (for taking doll photos😉). On the bed is a giant lounge pillow to relax with a book.

I am completely hooked on buffalo plaid! I tend to choose it in my own home décor and my wardrobe. As we started the modern dollhouse, I wanted one room to be designed around buffalo plaid. 😀 When I mentioned it to the hubs, he suggested we do a feature wall in the room with shiplap and I love the way it turned out! The house shell is an IKEA Pax cabinet but larger than the usual one we use. This particular one is 93” tall, but it is laying on its side. This makes the house nearly 8 feet long. I bought two add-on shelves to be the room walls and they are nailed into place since the normal brackets aren’t made to hold them in this position. Before installing them, hubs cut doorways into the walls. Emma’s doorway leads into the walk-in closet and that room continues to Ella’s room. Emma’s room is 28” tall x 29” wide x 22 1/2” deep.

The bed is the American Girl Canopy Bed. I painted it black and added Emma’s name to the foot board. I bought two buffalo plaid tea towels for the fabric. I couldn’t find what I wanted in the fabric section (imagine that) but these are perfect. One towel is the bedspread, the other towel I cut up and made two pillow cases and an accent pillow for the chair. The chair originally was blue and went with Girl of the Year 2008 Mia’s bedroom desk. I painted it with a gold metallic spray paint and really was impressed with the result.

On the wall I wanted the look of an old barn window. The “window” is an empty picture frame and the wreath is garland hung with twine. I bought three gold glitter picture frames and printed out pictures of animals wearing glasses for two of them 🤓 and used the third one on the nightstand. The nightstand is a craft box I painted black and added jewelry box pulls to. The working lamp is from the dollar store but I painted the “shade” gold.

I used Cricut vinyl gray paper for the wall covering to mimic gray paint. The vinyl is very easy to work with and doesn’t run or puddle like paint would. Hubs cut lattice to be the shiplap and I painted it lightly with white craft paint. I didn’t want any form of gloss so it would keep a casual feeling. The wood is glued onto a piece of foam board that we cut to the appropriate size. We did this because it is much easier to keep the shiplap in straight lines and didn’t require as many nails. We used finishing nails to attach the shiplap wall to the back wall of the Pax. 

The antelope head hanging on the wall I found at Target. I thought it was perfect the way it was! The house shaped shelf was white so I painted it gray. The pineapple (which I decorate with in my own home) is a pepper shaker. The Rubik’s Cube is a real working miniature toy and the succulent plant is from Target’s Dollar Spot. I painted the pot gold because terracotta didn’t go with the theme. The free-standing bookshelf is three wooden-cube boxes I found at Michael’s and painted black. The E above the bed is a refrigerator magnet. (Ella has a matching one.) I wrapped twine and twinkle lights on the canopy bed to give a nice glow in the dark.

I hope you love Emma’s room! To see more of the modern dollhouse visit these posts: Emma & Ella’s Walk-In Closet, Ella’s Bedroom, The Dollhouse Kitchen and The Dollhouse Bathroom and Laundry Room! Happy Collecting 💗

I have updated the photos since the original post in 2018. The doll room has much better lighting now. 😊 Below are the original photos.