DIY: Mini Lea Clark's Rainforest House

With our newfound love for American Girl Dolls, my daughter and I anxiously awaited the announcment and unveiling of the 2016 Girl of the Year! Since we are collecting the mini dolls, I was watching Amazon for Mini Lea Clark to be available.  But when she didn't show up on Amazon in the first several weeks of January, we were very happy to find her, and her first two books, at Costco for $25.00!  I felt that was a good price, since the books themselves can retail for up to $9.99 and the doll for up to $25. 

AG's Rainforest House for 18" dolls. 

 With doll in hands, we began watching reviews of Lea's Rainforest House and Lea's entire collection on one of our favorite You Tube Channels, American Girl Ideas.  The American Girl version is a fun playspace with with so much potentional for creative play. But, it's made for the 18" dolls, and costs $400!

My Mini Rainforest House! 

 I began to form my idea of how to construct a mini rainforest house for mini Lea.  I have been inspired in my crafting by the "Fabsome" creativity of Froggy from My Froggy Stuff and some of my ideas for this craft came from her videos.  So, if you'd like to save money by constructing a Rainforest House for your Mini Lea doll, here are a few pictures and some instructions describing how I made mine.









My list of materials used are as follows:

cardboard boxes
white contact paper
wood grain contact paper
hot glue gun and hot glue
glue sticks
wooden dowels of varying sizes
popsicle sticks
recycled paperboard (like from a cereal box)
scrapbook paper for the floor
scrapbook paper that looks like barn siding or wood siding
bamboo skewers
burlap
acrylic craft paint
watercolors
polyurithane
fabric and stuffing
Buttons and beads
pink or coral tulle
Printable background for the shower (which I'll make available here).

Step one: Make the walls.

The rainforest house has three walls. I cut two layers of cardboard for each wall and the floor, and hot glued them together.  I used my mini doll and photos or videos of the AG rainforest house to help find the correct size and scale for the mini doll.  For example, I knew that the house needed to be at least as wide as the doll laying down, since the bed fits that direction.  However, I did make the side walls a little longer than the AG version.  This was not intentional, however, it's not a big deal in our mini version.  My dimensions are:

 Step Two: Make the Window.

Cut out a square in the back wall to be the window.  Plan out where the bed will go when you're deciding where to cut the window, so that the bed will fit above and below it.  Be sure to take into account the mattress and pillow.

Cut popsicle sticks to fit into the window and frame it.  Fit them in, but don't glue them in yet.

Now comes the hard part....I decided to use wooden dowels as my "bamboo."  So, I created a frame for the window out of wooden dowels. I cut 4 pieces that would fit around the window. I cut notches in each end of the four dowels that framed the window, so that they'd fit together, and I'd be able to slide a picture in the window. When I glued the pieces to the window, I placed the side pieces underneath, and the top and bottom pieces on top. Before glueing on the window frame pieces, paint or stain them to make them look more like bamboo.  I used a mix of light yellow and a touch of brown watercolor to stain mine.  I also painted brown stripes around the dowels at intervals to look like the joints on bamboo.  I also polyurithaned the wooden dowels (optional).  After they were dry, I glued on the window frame and the popsicle sticks into the window.  The popsicle sticks creat a sort of windowsill that hangs slightly over toward the outside wall.

This shows how the window looks from the outside.  This picture was taken after the project was completed. 

Step Three: Stain and polyurithane your wooden dowels for bamboo if you wish.  You need 2 as posts, 2 glued across the top of each side wall, one connecting the two sides, and one for roof support. The roof support is held up with bamboo skewers.  In the front, the skewer is glued to the horizontal dowel, and in the back the skewer is stuck into the cardboard in the middle of the back wall.

Step Four: The Bunk

I made the bunk using a piece of cardboard, which I covered in wood grain contact paper.  Then I used bamboo skewers to create a little railing and edge around the bunk.

Step Five: Build your shower 

I used buttons and beads and bambook skewers to build the parts of the shower. 

This is a close up of the shower knob.  I used a 3 way bead, with round beads glued on the each end.  I mounted it on two buttons using a toothpick inserted into the bead and one of the button holes.  I glued a tiny button on the top.  This makes the knob able to turn, just like the AG version! 

Here are some pictures of the shower after it's completed and painted and put together. If you'd like to used my pattern for the back of the shower, you can download it here.

My daughter wanted a ladder for Lea to reach the top bunk so we made one using bamboo skewers.

That is the basic structure of the rainforest house!  I will address some of the other details in my craft review video! Below the video you'll find printables.  If you print them as a 4x6 photo they should be the correct size!