I painted the kitchen bay stones to match the rest of the dollhouse today and added all of the trim, windows, shutters, etc to it. I also added the little jewelry fixings to the fascia to match the front bay. I just have to wait for them to be completely dry so I can paint them white.
It's time to begin shingling the dollhouse I’m using the new laser cut speed shingle strips from Greenleaf. I got 2 packs of Diamond shape and 2 packs of Hexagon shape.
I’m going to use a pattern shingle for this dollhouse and the tutorial I followed is here. This tutorial is exclusively for the shingle strips but if you have loose shingles and you would also like to make a patterned roof, then you can follow this tutorial here.
Since there is already a tutorial for this kind of roof, I’m not going to repeat each and every step here. Follow the tutorial guide carefully so that your pattern comes out correctly.
I’m going to alternate rows of shingles between the hexagon and diamond shapes. The first thing I had to do was cut and label the rows.
I then painted my shingles, according to the tutorials painting diagram. I only gave the shingles one coat of paint. I want them to still have the “shingle” look and roughness. I don’t want them to be smoothly painted. The shingles will curl up on you after painting but they straighten out again once they are dry.
I’m going to apply my shingles directly on the dollhouse roof with no templates. This roof is very linear and has very easy angles. There’s really no need for templates even though they will make the cutting easier. I painted my roof black before putting on the shingles. I want to make sure that no raw wood peeks through. I applied the shingles with hot melt glue. It's really the easiest and fastest method.
When you get ready to cut your edges, try a scissor instead of the box cutter. For some reason, I wasn’t able to use my box cutter on them. It left the edges kind of jagged and I had to straighten them out with the scissors. I find that small, toe nail cutting scissors with the curved blade work best. Of course, it might be a matter of technique so if you're good with your craft knife, use that.
You have to be very careful how you place them so that the pattern comes out correctly. My pattern is kind of rounded at the top and pointy at the bottom because I alternated shingle shapes. If you use all diamonds, your pattern will be pointy at the top and bottom.
The tutorial has nine rows of shingles but I only needed eight of them. This is because I did not cut my first row in half and glued it upside down like the tutorial says. I wanted to have a little black from the roof peeking through the bottom edge so I place my shingles right side up so the diamond pattern touched the roof edge.
