Thursday, March 20, 2014

Happy 1st Day of Spring Everyone!!!  I was inspired last week by a picture of a miniature travel trailer I found a picture of on Pinterest.  So over the weekend I built this little Retro Travel Trailer.  I actually had a ton of fun building it and coming up with ideas of how to build each piece from items I found around the house and garage.  My favorite thing I made was the little battery on the front of the trailer and also the retro table and booth area inside the trailer.  This little trailer is on 7 inches wide by 7 inches tall by 1 foot long.  So not a lot of room to work with when I was creating it.  I was trying to keep it to scale to go along with the scale of a dollhouse.  I hope you all enjoy my newest creation. 

The barbeque had broken legs and I found some clay bricks I had previously made so I glued the bricks in stacks and put under the barbeque.   


I used wire to create the orange extension cord for the mini toaster oven outside and painted it orange and black once I drilled and glued the wire into the mini oven. 



The back side of the trailer was again my most challenging to make it open since it had too many curves in the structure to make look better, but this side should Always go against the wall as not to see. 

I went online and found pictures I liked and make bumper stickers and the license plate for the trailer.  Then I reduced the size of each picture and printed them off, it does take me a couple of print outs and reductions of the pictures to make them to the scale I like. 
This is the little battery I made, in which I found a little wood box that I painted black and used 2 beads for the electrical leads and then used a sewing pin pushed through the wood to hold the beads in place, then I cut apart a large electrical wire and pulled out the strands of copper wire and twisted it in manageable lengths and painted it red and black to make the battery wires. 

For the tail lights I went to the hobby store and found decorative Brads and cut off the prongs and painted them orange and red and glued them on. 

The Windows gave me Grief Big Time!!!  I originally had each window pane framed in Duct Tape which took forever to cut out the Duct Tape into 1/8 inch strips and then apply to each window pane frame.  Then the darn tape started to come off the glass panes, which lead me to take off each pane and redo the tape, then it came off again and I had to take the panes off again.  This time I just took off the tape which I really liked the whitish glue marks that the duct tape left behind and I left the window panes like that so they would look old.  I wanted to use the duct tape to surround the window panes since it made them look like they were framed in metal.  Plus I did try grey paint which rubbed of the pexi glass to easy.  You live and learn. 


The little bed area of the trailer.

I wish I would have made the trailer bigger, since the sink and stove area is only about 1 inch wide. 


View from the front door. 

I had a blast making the retro table and booth area.  I didn't want to try to upholster the bench cushions with material and ended up using Yellow Duct Tape on pieces of wood.  Which I also used the yellow duct tape on the tape and counter tops.  I then cut more of the thin Metal Sheets I also bought at the craft store to trim the table and counters with.  The metal work on the trailer took many hours cutting the metal into strips and then folding each strip, then using a nail to push all the little dots into the metal to give it a riveted look.   


I also used a lot of metal pieces around the trailer to make the trailer look old with many metal patches.  I also spent a lot of time cutting each metal shape then folding over the edges and then using a nail to push in the dots on the metal to make them look like they were riveted. 




The beginning of the trailer once I got done cutting out the wood.


The trailer cut out in wood from a paper pattern I made. 

This is the picture I found on Pinterest that inspired me to build my little retro trailer. 

Had to show a couple of pictures from last week when we went out and purchased a bigger travel trailer for camping this year.  We ended up getting a new 5th wheel that's almost 40 foot long. 

Thanks god I drove the car and got to follow the travel trailer home, it made me Nauseous watching it go by me it looked so massive, but hopefully my first time pulling it on the highway will go good.   


Loving the larger kitchen and the larger bedroom up the stairs. 

It took 9 hours looking through the Denver RV Show to find this floor plan which we really liked, since it feels more like a real house than a travel trailer.  Plus I really liked the large leather sectional couch.