Kids will love playing with their dolls and figures in a shoebox dollhouse that they’ve created and decorated themselves! Our how-to video shows you how.

What you need:

• 4 x shoeboxes
• 1 x large inner tube from wrapping paper (for the roof truss)
• Cardboard scraps for the roof
• coloured or patterned paper (scrapbooking paper makes good wallpaper)
• felt
• scissors
• tape
• glue

Miniature furniture suggestions:

• Try scouring the Hot Dollar shops for miniature furniture ideas. We found teeny tiny mirrors and mini-paddlepop sticks to make bedheads out of.
• Toilet rolls make good dining chairs – cut them in half and add a circle for a seat!
• Matchboxes also have lots of uses: wardrobes, drawers and beds.
• 2 x egg carton cups make a good couch
• Mini patty cake cases make good lampshades

Activity:

Watch our how-to video to see how put a shoebox dollhouse goes together.

Stack your shoeboxes two a-piece on top of each other so that you have two upstairs rooms and two downstairs rooms.  We also used the shoebox lids to make a fenced front garden.

Tape the shoeboxes together and add whatever you think it needs. We added two upstairs balconies (where the two upper shoeboxes were slightly smaller than the downstairs ones) and the lounge shoebox already had a ‘window’ hole poked in it.

Line your rooms with wallpaper – use scrapbooking paper for a colourful house.

Use felt for carpets.

To make a pitched roof, fold the long tube in half and sit it on top of the house.  Note where the tube and the edge of the house meet. Use a hot glue gun to stick it in place. Then glue roof sheeting to the frame.  We used corrugated craft paper for an authentic corrugated iron roof look.

Now think about what sort of furniture you can make and furnish your little house however you fancy. You could even add artwork to the walls if you wanted to.

Thanks to our sister company Kidspot Australia for creating the instructional video.