Prindsessen paa Ærten

Princess and the Pea

A Dutch dollhouse forum organized a competition; their inspiration was the fairy tale from Hans Christian Andersen: ‘The Princess and the Pea’. This is the story: “Granddad made a bed for little Sophia’s doll. But, granddad had some difficulties making a doll so he asked us for help”. We could buy the bed in a kit an make both the bed as the doll (princess) to our own inspiration. With the kit we received also 7 pieces of fabric which we had to use in this scene.

The first thing I did was read the fairy tale again. Then I started on the bed. No problem so far, until I started to make the 20 mattresses. After a few were done, they started to fall off of the bed. After finishing a total of ten mattresses, I made a new bed with a very high baldachin. I decided to make no more mattresses, ten was enough. From blotting-paper I made some curtains. The princess needed a ladder to get into the bed so I made this from two coffee stirrers and some floral wire. At the end I painted the ladder with gold paint.

The final part was the biggest problem. How to make a face for a 1/4" doll? After one sleepless night, I came up with a bright idea. For the body I used some pipe cleaners. Hands and feet are made from clay. The apron was made from a small pieces of cotton. The head is made from a wooden bead. And the hair is made of some hair of our dog (that was Sam’s part of the job, LOL) And than the face: thinking of the fairy tale, the princess could not sleep because there was something strange with the mattresses. Well why not let her look under the bed to see if she could find out what the problem was. That was my solution for not having to make a very tiny face. Here you see the whole scene I made.



And now I'm walking with my head in the clouds because I won the first price.