House Gnomes: A Miniature Laundry Room

Friday, July 26, 2024

House Gnomes: A Miniature Laundry Room

If you've visited my blog before you might remember that scattered throughout my home I have several of what I call "house gnome doors". Made with my Cricut, these black vinyl stickers look like cartoon mouse holes and are tucked away here and there at baseboard level. I thought it would be fun to be able to somehow peek inside the tiny houses and came up with the idea of using shadow boxes to create interior rooms. I started with the laundry room, check it out:

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(In case you missed it, here is that post where I took you on a tour of all my house gnome doors)

Wanting to look 'inside' the house gnome rooms without cutting holes in my walls is why I thought shadow boxes would work the best. I was browsing the thrift store and found a stack of these hot pink and turquoise wooden art pieces for $1.99 each. By flipping them around they created the perfect miniature shadowbox, all I had to do was paint them to blend in with my walls.

After the beige paint was dry I first sketched out in pencil how I wanted the room to look. This box was going to by a tiny laundry room with an upstairs and I painted those background details in acrylic.

Notice the difference between the middle shot and the one on the right - by cutting and adding a painted popsicle stick the stairs now have dimension.

Using more popsicle sticks I glued three together, painted them and positioned them to serve as the upstairs floor.

I recycled a small cardboard box to create the washer and dryer by first painting it in white, gluing a cut popsicle stick to the top and then adding in the details with markers.

More popsicle sticks served to create wall shelving as well.

Next was the really fun part - coming up with accessories and decorations! Combing through a huge bin of Barbie toys was really helpful here. I simply chose what I wanted based on size and shape, then repainted it to go with my laundry room.

If you need to, you can always find cheap tiny accessories at Dollar Tree, as well as the popsicle sticks and the hook and loop tape that I mention in a minute.

The two baskets is a Barbie basket that I cut in half lengthwise and glued into place, the containers and planters are all Barbie kitchen containers that I painted and the overhead light is a button. The towels are just pieces of felt that I folded over and glued in place and the greens are tiny bits that I cut off of larger faux bushes in my craft supply. I added in a couple of extra gold buttons as decoration.

With the room done I needed a way to close it up. Each room will hang on the wall in my home near the corresponding gnome door, but I don't want them open all of the time. For one reason having them open would look kind of cluttery, but also I hate dust!

Using a piece of heavy cardstock I cut it into the size of the shadow box and glued popsicle sticks to the interior side to add strength. It doesn't show in this photo, but I painted the doors in the same shade of beige as the boxes.

In order to attach the doors to the boxes, but still make them easy to open, I used tiny bits of hook and loop tape. The tape is adhesive backed so once it was cut I just pressed it into place.

Here is how the box looked with the cover on. Nice and tidy, but a little bland.

Back to the Cricut I went to create a pretty decorative sticker in gold. It's simple but nicely dresses up the box.

And there you have it, a little laundry room! I have more posts coming up where I'll show you in similar detail each one of the tiny rooms I have made, as well as a post showing how they look installed on the walls.

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to miniature post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

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