Tuesday, July 23, 2013

The Sea Glass Victorian Cottage Dollhouse


 The Sea Glass Victorian Cottage Dollhouse

This is the Sea Glass Cottage Dollhouse. My vision for this house was a wonderful light, open and airy house that might be located near an ocean.A wonderful beach house that you could spend summers in. The wrap around porch, porch swing, and lookout tower, all perfect for enjoying summers by the sea. Two houses I love were the inspiration for this house. The first, the house from the TV show Revenge that the character Emily lives in. The second was this house pictured below in Key West that was purchased by Calvin Klein during the years I lived on the island. For years it was just know as " the most photographed" house by locals. I love the fresh crisp white and the sea glass aqua accent color.

Real house in Key West Florida
Inspiration for  The Sea Glass Cottage
Full length windows were added, and small eyebrow windows to top floors for extra light


The lookout tower was a fun custom addition. The extra gingerbread added great balance to the overall house. The ship wheel laser trim is available, as are all other laser trims from Heritage laser.
Add caption
Extra gingerbread pieces were cut and used over the windows.
Lets take a look inside before getting back to the porch and flower details.



The color scheme was soft to mid tone corals and aqua to warm turquoise, and lots of clean whites.







The Spiral staircase is the jewel of the interior. The laser cut outs are a smaller scale matching design of the gingerbread used on the porch. 







Let's step back outside and check out the details of the porch and landscaping.
I made these two sea shell urns for each side of the front door.Shells are lovely for summer and bringing the ocean motif up to the house. 


All the lovely porch gingerbread is available from Heritage laser. 

The hanging baskets are lush and full with summery ferns, pink geraniums, caladiums, and light pink filler flowers.
The flower beds were done in mixed mediums with colors in shades of pink,water blue, and again, lots of fresh white.  The textures were important in this design. The mix of slightly weedy, and wind blown feeling , blended with structured garden flowers. 
a side porch entrance was part of the design change to give a very open and inviting feel to the porch.  a ceiling fan was also added to the center of the gazebo area with fan blades painted to match the shutters and move just a bit of color from the house out. 

So, this was my essence of all that is wonderful about summer house. The house is cool , light and fresh in design, and you can just feel and smell the ocean breeze blowing through the screen door and lightly moving the fern fronds in the hanging baskets. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the summer............ Lots of love from South Florida.