Somewhat before last Christmas, we bought a number of Sylvanian Families items from a seller on Gumtree (you may remember the arrival of our beautiful Oakwood Manor - this was part of that lot). Among them was a Lil' Woodzeez bakery. Now, I'm not generally a big fan of Lil' Woodzeez. I don't like the shape of the animal figures, and I find both the figures and clothes are of a lesser quality than Sylvanians. I know some people love them - this is just my opinion. But here's the thing: they do have some rather lovely accessories and playsets, which are just the right size for Sylvanians. The car and caravan set is a case in point: it's gorgeous, and SO much cheaper than the Sylvanian caravan alone! The big problem I have with a lot of Woodzeez items though, is the colours. Everything is very bright, and there is a LOT of pink. Like, Barbie pink. Now I like pink, but it just doesn't fit well with our vision of Sylvania. We feel that Sylvanians mostly prefer more natural tones and either softer or more traditional colours.
So we had this bakery on our hands, and boy was it PINK. But it really was rather lovely, and came with lots of great little foods etc, so Caitlyn decided she would like to receive it as part of her Christmas present, provided that I was happy to repaint it later. Sounded like fun - I happily agreed.
So anyway, I have finally got around to redecorating the bakery. And it was fun, if super time consuming. I thought you might like to see what I did.
First up, I decided to spray the whole thing in a cream colour, using a paint that said it would work on plastic. This way I would have Caitlyn's requested cream base colour for the walls, plus it would act as a primer for the detailed bits, as I planned to use the regular craft acrylic paints that I already had (I didn't want to spend masses of money on special paints). I started by taking the bakery apart as much as possible. The base (which we did not want to paint at all) came off nicely with the help of a screwdriver. Two of the walls wanted to stay together (there seemed to be glue involved with how the acorn sign is attached), so I let them be, and just removed the other wall and the door. I also masked off some areas where Caitlyn wanted to keep the original colour. Naturally I forgot to take pictures of this process, but I used masking tape and aluminium foil. This is what it looked like after the application of spray paint (and after the masking was removed):
Next it was time to paint all the teeny-tiny details. This was, needless to say, by far the most time-consuming part of the whole process. Caitlyn chose the colours, and mixed the dark red herself as she was after something specific for that colour (hint, hint - can you guess which of her new families is to run the bakery??).
As you can see, the first coat tends to go on somewhat patchily! Another couple of coats fixed this up nicely.
After everything was painted its new colours, I sealed the whole thing with a few clear spray coats to protect the paint and give it a nice even satin finish.
Once it was all dry, I simply reassembled it, and the bakery was all ready for its new owners to move in! Here are some before and after shots, so you can see the difference between the original colours, and the new colours Caitlyn chose. PLEASE NOTE that due to a brain fade on my part, I completely forgot to take "before" shots, so I have borrowed these "before" pictures from an ebay listing, which can be found here, if you are interested in buying one of these bakeries yourself! I don't know this person, but I hope they will forgive me using their photos, and accept my best wishes for selling their bakery (call it extra advertising)! (Seriously though, if these are your pictures, and you would prefer I removed them, please let me know in the comments below and I will do so immediately).
Front:
Side:
Other Side:
Interior (oven side):
Interior (other side):
Wow, I have just noticed how rough some of my painting looks when viewed through a camera lens! It's much less noticeable in real life (at least I think it is - I hope it is!) - I guess we don't usually poke our faces in this close... lol. It just goes to show things don't always have to be 100% perfect to still look good to the casual observer.... right? Right?
Overall, I think this project was a success. Both Caitlyn and I like the new colours much better than the old ones, and it was fun repainting a building - something I have never embarked on before. Would I do it again? Maybe. If I found a building I really liked, it was cheap, and I really didn't like the colour, then probably yes. Would I recommend buying Woodzeez buildings and repainting them in order to save money? No. I used acrylic paints that I already had, but I did buy two cans of spray paint (cream, and clear) for this, so there was an expense involved. More importantly though, I spent Many Hours on this project. So if it seems like fun to you, then yes, do it. It was fun. But don't do it purely in an attempt to save cash - that would be a false economy, especially if you don't already have the paints.
Wow, this turned out to be a very long and picture-heavy post - well done if you made it this far! Have a great week. xx
