Project Kitbash - Gloria

Not gonna lie, even though I lack a dollhouse to put any of it in, I do like Gloria furniture. It’s inexpensive, easy as pie to find since it’s all over eBay, and despite the cheapness…pretty darn well made. Broken Dolly TV has a good review (and repaint) of one of the sets on YouTube here. I will point out that while they advertise this stuff as being 1:6 in scale, it works better for 8 to 10 inch dolls, rather than Barbie and friends, who are 11 to 12-inchers.

That being said, I do agree the attention to detail is a bit better with the Gloria stuff than with Mattel’s offerings (though to be fair, Mattel’s Barbie sets are pretty inexpensive these days as well, at least at Walmart, so it’s a six/half a dozen situation). Mattel gives molded plastic pillows on beds, Gloria provides thin fabric ones, and so on. Mattel also brings the family-friendliness and keeps it nice and clean…and Gloria offers things like drink cabinets and a happy hour patio bar. The drink cabinet set was what got my attention, actually.

Heh.  Waker's Wark.

Look at that thing, it’s…well…gloria-ous. (Note, it comes with the booze bottles and the glasses and ice buckets – the tea set is something I got elsewhere, the food and baking items are Re-Ment, and the dishes are from another Gloria set). These things are slightly fiddly to put together – see that little shelf in the top part of the cabinet? It fits into slots on the uprights, and those uprights have to be set in place in a particular way…which they don’t properly tell you in the instructions. Otherwise, I love this thing.

Except for the bilious pink color. That had to go. Repainting it was fairly easy, if not as simple as just taking it out to the carport and spray-painting it. I had a request for a how-to post, so here it is, featuring the “Rose Palace” themed table and chairs set (I’ll do the swing later).

The white plastic isn’t so bad, but that pink and purple isn’t my thing. Plus, it doesn’t match the wine cabinets. So here’s basically how I do the thing.

Lay out the pieces and take a rough-grit sandpaper to ’em. The point here is twofold: rough up the smooth surface so the paint adheres better, and add a pseudo-woodgrain texture to it. Just make sure if you’re doing it for the texture, you work the sandpaper in the direction you’d want the grain to go. Then it’s time to paint!

I use basic acrylics here, in nutmeg brown, and a flat square-tipped brush.

First coat, nothing super impressive. Don’t get excited about the streaks, they won’t be visible later (unless you wanted to leave it this way, or if you want this effect use a lighter base coat and use a darker one over top to make the streaks). Here’s where you can be lazy; in most cases you’d want a smooth coat, but here since it’s “wood”, I’m just slapping it down and leaving the brush strokes visible. It takes fewer coats to cover this white plastic than it did to cover the pink on the cabinets, but I think I still laid on about six or seven, until I couldn’t see any bald spots.

Once you have all the bits that will be visible to the eye covered – yes, including the undersides and anything left sticking out once you put the pieces together – it’s time for the details.

Dark Wash is the first and simplest thing I learned about painting miniatures. Basically what you do is mix a shadow color for your base (black works, but that results in an overall flatness). In this case I used a burnt umber, darn terracotta red and a drop of black. Mix that up and then dilute it 1:1 with water (one part paint to one part water). This you pick up with a round brush and just…swipe on. It settles naturally into creases and hollows and makes extra shadows for you. On the large flat surfaces the brush strokes can again help to fake a woodgrain look if you do it right. Here you can (hopefully) see the difference between the washed pieces and the base-coated ones, and a closeup of how the wash works.

The final step is drybrushing. Mix up a highlight color (again, white is a basic one, but will flatten your colors overall). For these I used a tan brown, a touch of golden yellow, and a little bit of the same red I used in the shadow wash. Get that good and mixed up and then whip out your square brush again. Dip the very end into the paint, and only the very end. Use a paper towel, palette, or newspaper to get any excess off by lightly painting on it with the brush. The point is to have the barest amount of paint possible on the bristles. Then you just lightly stroke the tip of the brush over the raised areas on the pieces. Any embossed designs, edges, whatever would catch the light, and in the case of flat surfaces I just stroked the brush edge-on in the direction of the “wood” grain.

I sealed these with basic Rustoleum matte finish. This method won’t hold up to actual kids playing with the pieces, rough handling, or a few days left in the backyard, but they should be quite nice for display. The extra layers of paint help the plastic feel a bit more solid as well.

Here’s where I went a step further. I happened to have some upholstery remnants that worked out perfectly for this, but you could do it with any fabric you liked, really, though felt might be a little too thick if you want to fold it under the edges like I did here.

Lay your piece to be upholstered on the fabric you want to use and gauge where you want any pattern to lie on it. Cut around it so you have enough excess to fold under the edges. I just used white glue to stick the fabric on – something stronger would probably be better, but these aren’t for intensive play. Fold the extra under and secure it. Once the glue dries, use an exacto to cut a slit in the fabric over the part of the seat the chair back fits into (or any other attachment points you may have).

That's Angel Face's skirt back there.

Et voila, nice “wood” furniture. Now I have a garden swing to finish and a tea cart and dish cabinet on the way.