Troublesome Chairs

I want to create some type of hangout for my dolls.  I haven't decided exactly what type of place it will be, but I'm going to need furniture.  Since I vowed to be more crafty and less spendy, I'm going to try and make most of the furnishings myself.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

First up, chairs.  I want 8 of them.  I don't know why, but I get fixated on things and I've decided that I must have at least 8 chairs for this "hangout."  So, I've spent the last 3 weekends trying to design and put together a chair that I can easily mass produce out of simple materials.  I also need to be able to take it apart for storage and reassemble it without any damage.

The 1st weekend was a total bust and I had to scrap everything, including my choice of material (stinky duct tape)and my design, which was an armless chair with a singular rod and base holding it up.  I may come back to it, because I'm nothing if not stubborn.  However, I was stressing myself out, so a redirect was in order.  The 2nd weekend I came up with this design.

It's a very simple pattern.  I folded a piece of paper in half, sketched the shape I wanted by hand and cut it out.  It's not really that even, but it's not like I'm making them to sell.  I cut the 1st one out of a Dora Explorer box.  Although made of compressed cardboard it was still thicker than I wanted to work with.  The 2nd was cut from file folders.  I made an opening in it but didn't like how it looked.  What I did like though was the file folders.  They were the perfect thickness, easy to bend and I literally have hundreds of them.  The 3rd is folders wrapped in duct tape... that doesn't stink.

Every time I make a prototype, I seem to change how I put it together or I want to do something differently.  However, these are the basic materials inside each chair.  I decided I wanted to pad the front and make a cushioned seat, so the white things are cut up paper towels for this use.  The long strips of corrugated cardboard get rolled up and go inside the seat bases.

This chair is almost ready for production!  Duct tape has been applied to the exterior back, seat fronts and seat cushion.  Electrical tape has been applied to the corrugated chair bottom.  After I glue the two back pieces together and let them dry, I use electrical tape to secure the sides and chair bottom.  Very easy to put together and take apart.

3 weeks in and I've got a complete chair set!  Unfortunately, this is actually an abandoned idea.  This green Dollar Tree contact paper is more patterny than I care for on a grand scale, but in small sections I think it's cute.  However, using contact paper would cause me to have to cut out an extra back piece.  Since the contact paper is so thin, it shows the shape marks of the duct tape lines unless you put a thicker material between them.  I went ahead and made a second chair anyway because I had exactly 6 of these white "chair legs," which are the tips from ball point pens.

A photo with dolls so you can see the scale.  The seats are large enough for my widest guy to sit comfortably.  As for chair height, Fashionista feet can touch the ground, but Liv has to tippy toe.  My next chairs will not be as high because the chair legs will be shorter -- if I use any at all.  Like I said, I keep changing how I put it together.

Well, that's what I've been working on.  I don't expect to finish this "hangout" project anytime soon, heck, this year even, but the idea is there.  At this point, I just want to see what I'm capable of making. Hopefully, I can do this without frustrating myself too much in the process.  We shall see.