Dolls House Emporium Collectors' Blog

Continuing the look at Maddie’s amazing Hobbit Home, here are some more stunning photographs and more of the story on how it all came together.

View into living room/study from Hall

I need to hoover!!!!

All the maps and documents you see are real middle-earth maps printed onto ‘aged’ paper. The scrolls all have writing printed onto them in Bilbo’s handwriting or Elvish. I made the tiny quills from feathers and the candles out of Fimo. The rug took me a LONG time to do. I looked everywhere for one similar to the one in the movie but couldn’t find one I was happy with so in the end I used good old Microsoft Paint and drew the design myself from the rug in the movie! then printed it onto cotton and sewed the rest of the rug.

The family tree you see on the wall is the actual Baggins family tree which I made in Paint using a family tree template

I love the little statue of Frodo and Sam – these are Warhammer models given to me in 2001 by my friend Claire (thanks Lu!) I never got round to painting them and so I made them a base out of Fimo and painted them in a bronze effect. I once made Claire watch Fellowship of the Rings and she sat through all of it, didn’t understand much of it and thought that the hobbits were called ‘gibbons’ I will never forget that lol!!!

Thror’s map – made a frame out of wood, varnished it and put the map in it

The pictures above show the scene from the movie where Gandalf looks at Bilbo’s table and my recreation of it

Kitchen. I bought all the china plates but made all the food and ‘custom made’ the fireplace. The units were white wood unfinished when I bought them and I just varnished and filled them!

Close up of the fireplace. This was a free gift from Dolls House Emporium I re-painted it, hollowed out a hole and added logs and firebulb and then added the bricks round the outside. If I was being pedantic, it should really be curved, but I am happy with it for now till I have time to make another!

I made the table for the sink out of bits I cut off the dressers to make them fit in. My favourite bit of food I made is the string of garlic hung in the corner – well I’m pretty sure hobbits don’t like vampires anyway (it’s just me that does!)

The pantry – I installed shelves and filled full of food – I made all the food in here from Fimo

Close up of the shelves – many thanks to Angie Scarr for her wonderful books on making food out of Fimo which provided LOADS of inspiration and instruction for me. I hadn’t used Fimo since I was a small child so it was great to learn how to make mini food as an adult!

We’ll have one more installment for you on Maddie’s stunning creation so stay tuned!

Today we have a real treat for you in the shape of a very special miniature home. We’ll let Maddie herself tell you the rest.

This all began when I was a young child and read the Hobbit for the first time. I believe I was about 10 and I was instantly hooked.
My Nanan lent me her copy of the Lord of the Rings about 1 year later and I remember thinking that the trilogy leaped into a far more complex world and one that I completely lost myself in.

I have read Lord of the Rings about 20+ times now and each time it holds as much magic as the first time. When they announced that they were making a movie, I was really concerned that it would not live up to my imagination and that I would be disappointed. As it happens, a lot of it DID live up to my expectations, and when Gandalf visited Bag End in the Fellowship of the Rings, I could have cried with excitement because it was PERFECT and nearly exactly as
I imagined!

Anyway I decide to take on this project as part of a college course I was doing part time when my twins boys were 1 year old. The module was called ‘the importance of play’ and we had to make a toy to hand in at the end of the term. Of course me being me, I took it to the extreme and at first I decided to make a little hill with a front door like Bag End.

I used to play Warhammer and make scenery and paint the little models so the idea was to make an A4 type size model hill using my Warhammer scenery stuff (foam, static grass etc) I can just hear my friend Andi rolling her eyes at me and calling me ‘geek’, but apparently I was born this way and I don’t think I will ever change.

Then I thought, well what if I made the roof removable and had a little room inside? Then of course I started drawing up plans and added more rooms and then decided ‘what the hell?’ I might as well make a replica of the one from the movie and make it big enough to fit in dolls house type furniture!

I decided to make everything by hand – the frame, the garden outside, the furniture (as much as I could), the food and it has been a real labour of love and I have found something I truly enjoy doing. I have always been ‘crafty’ and enjoy painting etc, but this captures my imagination even more!

And so, a year later I have a nearly finished replica of Bag End. I still have quite a bit of work to do on it, but I think it can be classed as an ongoing project that I can improve over the years (yes I am a perfectionist when it comes to things that I make!)

I have some work to do still on the outside – the space visible between the lid needs filling in and I have more trees etc to put in. And of course the infamous gate with ‘no admittance except on party business’ sign!

I made this vegetable plot with nails and wire ‘twigs for the fence and I made the veg out of Fimo.
The flowers are made from FlowerSoft and wire

An attempt to take photo through the windows – didn’t come out very well but putting it on anyway because the fire looks all ‘homey’.

We’ll have more to being you from the Hobbit’s home in later blogs.

Some of you may have seen a castle for sale just over 3 years ago on ebay from the Isle of Wight.  Well, I was lucky enough to become the new home owner!!  Unfortunately I had to keep the castle in storage for nearly 3 years but in the last few months, I have made a few changes!  Being such a big project, it is going slowly, but it is changing shape and colour!  Although it’s such a large building, I didn’t want any stairs taking up space inside, so I have made a spiral stair case which will be fixed to the outside and floodlight! I have great plans for the inside but I wont spoil the surprise, you will have to come back and see the photos!

Back after a 15 year break and I could not get over how the Dolls House Emporium has grown! WOW

A shop kit was a Christmas present from my lovely daughter for looking after my grandson, like I need to be paid in any way ).

After much thought, I have decided 0n a Victorian Tea Shop and have been busy doing research over the last week.  I have chosen a colour scheme and started a “story board” of my ideas and plans together with a list of items – that is getting longer by the day.

I have decided to try and make as much furniture and soft furnishings as my arthritic hands will allow, so I will have to wait and see how things pan out.

As I am new to this site and still have not read the help files, I need to check if I can upload pics as I go along, if not I will create a website and give you all the link to keep check on my progress.

See you soon )

Hi Everyone,

We have quite a bit to report on in this post! We helped the human to choose all the wallpaper and some flooring for our home, we can manage without carpets for a while until we have saved more money! We also chose the colours for the woodwork and interior of our home, all the doors and wooden surrounds will be white along with skirting boards, the hallways are going to be magnolia as its nice and light , unless we change our minds again.

I chose my kitchen,  its a lovely pine one which will be fitted just need to decide if there will be an island unit or if I’m going to have it on the wall as well. It came with cooker/oven and microwave so we are sorted for cooking! Human let me choose some lovely things for my kitchen as well, pots, pans,  china etc. and we got lots of food! Can’t wait to be cooking in my kitchen.

Daddy got a home office so he can work as soon as we move in. Human has decided we will be living in the basement to begin with, something to do with it being smaller and she can practice on it before doing our main house.  Just hope she doesn’t mess it up as the wall paper was quite expensive!

We are hoping to get some more furniture for Christmas but will have to wait and see, if not human has said she is saving money so will let us know the budget and we can look through the book and choose some things.

Best go the humans will be home soon and little Simon is off playing with big Simon’s toys!