Mid Century Modern Furniture!

I’ve been meaning to post this for almost a year but you guys know procrastination is my middle name by now. 😂

I was setting up my living room diorama recently and realised that it looked kinda empty. With only one sofa and a big stretch of floor, it really needed somewhere else to sit. I quite like the look of mid-century modern furniture so after a good Pinterest browse for inspiration and what’s probably the most basic planning sketch ever, I started making a chair. 

For some reason I didn’t actually look up any plans or preexisting tutorials so I probably went about it in a much more complicated way than I needed to, and yes, I stupidly did make it literally IN the diorama, and yes I got superglue on the floor. 🙈

The legs and arm rests are wooden dowels - the ends of which I sanded down into a taper - and some flat bamboo plant canes along with a couple of BBQ skewers and wood glue to hold them all together. The darker side pieces are layers of mountboard with cereal box card on the sides like ‘veneer’, coloured with alcohol markers and sealed with multiple layers of mod podge.

It’s a little rough in places, but I like to think it was a family heirloom or that they got it secondhand and had it reupholstered. On that note, I really wanted to make the seat green velvet or felt for a real vintage vibe, but I didn’t have enough fabric in the right colour, so I used this dinosaur print I’ve been hoarding for ages instead. The actual seat part I think was either foam or sponge, but I can’t remember which. The cushion is just some fabric from an IKEA face cloth and some wadding. I used another burnt orange face cloth from the same set for a rug as well.

I also realised that there was one whole side of the room that was missing something, and as I was still in a mid-century modern mood, I cobbled together a sideboard out of mountboard, toffee apple sticks and wood effect scrapbook paper. Unfortunately said paper was the wrong colour, more of a very pale pinkish pine, so I went in with alcohol markers to make it more like teak or walnut but sadly it kind of obliterated the wood grain, so I had to improvise with the pen strokes and to be honest I would have been as well to do it all from scratch after all that. 😂 

The handles to the doors are just brass beads with a pin pushed through them. The doors don’t actually open, they’re just decorative, but I’m really pleased with it overall. In hindsight I wish I had made them functional for extra storage and photography potential, but at the time I couldn’t find the small hinges that I know I have in my stash somewhere so I just had to leave them as they were.

I made the lamp too, which seemed to take even longer than the credenza because I wanted it to actually light up, using some small LED balloon lights I have, but it was getting complicated to hold the light up without compromising the shade, so I just gave up and left it as a prop. 😂 The base of it is a wood effect light pull I got from a DIY shop years ago, and the shade is just scrap fabric and card.

The plants are my own work too and the candlestick is an old Barbie ‘My Scene’ one I repainted and then replaced the plastic candle with a real one because it had warped and looked ridiculous. 😂 The little stone bust I got from a local plant shop but I’ve seen them online along with lots of other carved crystals.

In this next picture the orchid is from one of the ‘Miniverse’ kits, but I used an old shampoo lid for the pot.

Whilst I was in the mood, I also made a coffee table, again out of mountboard and wood effect paper. It’s a little more rustic looking as I made it very quickly and (again) without a plan, but Max and Juno have eklectic taste so I think it still works. 😂

^ This is Nadia by the way, she’s one of my favourite dolls but like most of my collection always gets sidelined in favour of Max and Juno when it comes to photoshoots! 🙈

There’s still a lot I want to change in the living room diorama - I’m no longer such a fan of the exposed brick walls, and the windows on the right, or the main sofa, but they’re ok for now and redoing it all will take some time.