Today I will be creating a Robotime miniature kit review from the kit called 'Cathy's Flower House', aka "DIY miniature model kit Gracie Greenhouse". Simply because it's one of the three kits from Robotime that I got for my birthday (what a surpriiiise it was, I was so happy !)
In a previous article, I was talking about all the different kinds of dollhouse kits that I found on Amazon and others.
By the way, have you seen all of my DIY miniature kits light up at night yet? 😉 Including Cathy's Flower House!
Ok, let's just dive right into things!
Cathy's Flower House- An Oversight and instruction manual.
Product name of this mini house: Robotime Miniature Kit DIY DG104-Cathy's Flower House.
Place(s) to buy:
Amazon. Or straight from the manufacturer Robotime.
Owners:
Robotime, aka Rolife, a little more info:
Robotime was founded in 2007 and specializes in educational toys for children and adults.
They were the first to offer worldwide puzzles in 3D Assemblage Technologie and have more than 400 DIY Wooden model puzzle pieces.
This allows children to assemble their own music boxes and dollhouses, alone or with a parent. To make it even more fun, Robotime also has DIY wooden model kits with LED lights and music. Children ànd adults will have hours of fun with these great DIY kits!
I will dive deeper into the 3D puzzles in a later article, once I or a family member has assembled it 🙂
Overall rank of this DIY dollhouse:
Warranty:
30-day refund or replacement
Cathys Greenhouse kit: an Overview:
Unique Robotime miniature kit to make a miniature greenhouse.
Look out gardeners, put that trowel down, because it's time to make your own miniature greenhouse, complete with LED lighting.
This do-it-yourself miniature room model will keep you busy for hours while you cut, fold, glue, and transform the supplied pieces into wonderful souvenirs. This is a great project for a grandparent to complete with a child or the perfect gift for people who love crafting.
Not suitable for children, unless accompanied by adults.
Robotimes Greenhouse: the content:
This Greenhouse DIY kit contains the following materials:
- Wood, paper, cloth, and metal parts
- Illustrated manual
- ( I now have the English manual uploaded on my website in a PDF-file )
- Brush
- Glue and 1 tweezer
- 2 batteries
Already painted. A total of 231 pieces. Average time to build: 20 hours.
The Scale is: 1/24
Measurements: - 195mm high x 175mm wide x 175mm deep.
4 Tips on Extra Materials that You Could Need to Assemble Cathy's Flowerhouse
- Tip 1: If you run out of glue or the glue isn't included in the kit, then you can buy the exact same one on Amazon so I've been told.
- TIP 2: In my experience, I have found that using a 'Fingertip Crafting knife' from the brand Fiskars, is a very handy tool indeed!
- TIP 3: Have spare electric wires (1mm) and heat shrinkable tubes available, because trust me: you will break a lot of them, especially in the beginning.
- TIP 4: Another tip that I recently found out is that for gluing wires together, and to have it happen more quickly, it is better to use "fast grab Tacky glue", instead of the glue from the kits or using super glue. (trust me!)
A Robotime Review: Cathys Greenhouse Kit
The Good & the Bad :
- Very decent material, although made in China haha
- You love to assemble miniatures, but you don't want to saw them yourself or don't have the right material or space to do so. Like the craft saw: material to use for crafting or craft table saw: another material to use for crafting.
- very colorful and a lot of fantasy came into this kit
- You don't need anything else to start out, there are 2 different types of glue included + a brush + tweezers. You would just need some (fine) scissors and a ruler.
UPDATE : I have seen people saying that this is not always the case! - Most of it is very easy to do, you might get into some trouble with the plants, but I read on Facebook that I am not the only one struggling with them 🙂
- non-toxic and sustainable materials
- A missing piece! Not something crucial, cause there are so many pieces in this kit, but still..
(See the link below to get a replacement for parts) - sometimes the colors of the same piece of furniture are slightly different.
- the instruction manual could be more detailed and less confusing. The instructions for Miller's Garden were a lot easier, for example.
- the pieces that should be together in 1 bag, so you could find them easier to put 1 piece of furniture together, are divided between several bags, thus it takes a long time to find all pieces.
I am a fan of puzzles, so I don't mind, but I've seen reviews of people giving the kit 1 star only because of this. I think that is a bit exaggerated honestly! But that's just my opinion 🙂
Cathys Flower House: my personal walkthrough and issues.
I will walk you through a few things I have encountered, including pictures to show you what I mean!
- Picture number 1 :
The door wasn't made of 'transparent paper' as it said in the manual, but transparent plastic. I could live with that, but it was the first thing I had to make, so that started out confusing.
- Picture numbers 2 and 3.
I had to cut these 2 pieces into 3 pieces each. Turned out I have to paint over 2 edges because of this. Luckily I still have brown acrylic paint, so not a big deal honestly.
- Picture numbers 4 and 5.
You need to unfold the red rope, cut it, and then make a flower out of it. Well, this was irritating to do, so I just used some of my own (red) crêpe paper and that was so much easier!
Look at the difference, the red one on the right is made with my own paper! I have no clue why they would make it that hard, just add another piece of the paper that's red, like the yellow piece of paper!
- Picture number 6.
This picture is from someone else, the different colors for parts happened to me as well, I forgot to take a picture.
- Picture number 7
As you can see, the 'floor' was bent, which made it hard to glue all the side pieces together.
This brings us to picture number 8 as a result: I had to cut off a piece because the greenhouse wasn't fitting at all to the floor anymore.
- Picture number 8.
I needed to put them away in a box so that my cats couldn't get to them 🙂
But in the end, it was surely worth the hassle, look at the pictures of the progress and the small video I made off the result on Youtube, isn't it pretty!?
Find support from Robotime for these DIY dollhouses!
You can find a lot of videos from Robotimes miniature kits on YouTube and pictures on Facebook. You could contact them through Facebook or email in case of problems.
- I am getting a lot of questions on how to contact them: this is their official email support: Jack.deng@robotime.com. (people seem to be getting the most help for missing pieces etc through this mail ).
- Missing or broken parts? Now Robotime replaces them for free!
You just need to pay for the shipping costs and it doesn't matter where you bought the miniature kit.
Follow THIS LINK to get replacements.
Extras:
Dustcovers, are very handy if you want to make several kits!
My Final Opinion of Robotime Miniature Kit Cathy's Flower House
Cathy's flower house is overall a very nice dollhouse miniature kit. It has decent quality and hours and hours of fun. A few mistakes here and there, but nothing I can't overcome.
Any questions? Then leave a comment below or you can now join my newest Facebook group or Youtube channel.
I wish you happy crafting!
Best regards,
Lizzy
Related article:
I loved reading your website and would love you to look at my environment project i had my students complete with house hold products such as empty plastic bottles etc. I love the way you show how to make the dolls house as I did in my project. I think this kind of website is fantastic for schools and student projects which could really open up your audience so keep up the hard work as I love the website.
I really enjoyed your article as I learned a lot about this subject. I have worked in schcools setting up projects for students and have organized projects similar to this for them. I will share this information with people I know who are still currently working in the school system. My work was primarily setting up after school programs for children who were on probation or gang affiliated. We did projects such as basket weeving, creating murals, and prpjects involving song and dance activities.
This minature dollhouse kit would do well as a student project for some of the teachers I know. You have explained this very well in your article of how to construct the doll houses.
I do not like the fact that there are a few missing pieces here and there. That indicated to me lack of attention to detail in putting the kit together. But overall it seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Thanks for presenting this information. I will share it.
What a fun way of learning art and craft for children. As much as the youngies may enjoy assembling the parts, that is something even the adult may find interesting (speaking of myself on this one lol). I like the dollhouses you have here they look pretty cool, and can make an awesome birthday gift.
Wow. I really enjoyed your article. One of my interests is working with wood. I've always wanted to build dollhouses; I just never got around to doing it. you did an amazingly thorough job of explaining how you worked around some issues that you had with the kit, including making your own replacements for missing parts. By the way, did you contact Robotime regarding the missing parts? If you did, what was their response?
Your picture at the top is so big I had to scroll in order to see all of it. Could you make it about 10% smaller? It may not be important for others, because my default font size settings are a little larger due to my "old" eyes.
Hi Dane !,
Thank you for your comment on my article. Honestly I haven't contacted Robotime yet, but you are right , I probably should. Although lots off people seem to have the same issues. We miniaturists always find a way to fix things though , it is a good learning proces 🙂 That is if you have the right crafting materials, as mentioned in these articles of mine : crafting materials .
You are right: the picture on top is way to big, I need to figure it out and make it smaller, but my site is a work in progress, I have only just started it. Thank you for mentioning it though ! Happy crafting !
PS It is never to late to start a hobby , go for it !
Quite an interesting one here and I must say that this is really interesting to see. I am a homesxhool teacher for my daughters and seeing this here is quite great to see here since they offer a lot of interest as to what can get the kids very busy and creative while using simple materials to great something worthwhile. Thanks so much for this here
My little sister has been asking me about this Cathy's flower house for a while now and I just didn't understand what the deal was with it. I find it very interesting though that you have some very nice information on it and have given details too on how to assemble it together. The pictures will make it easier for me to make when I but one for her. Tha k you for the details.
Hi, Lizzy,
This looks like a lot of fun! I would like to better my craft skills. I'm pretty sure this would help to boost anyone's creativity, patience, and discipline.
The price isn't bad. I'd love to try this one you mention and then we'll see. I guess I'll have to wear glasses to work on it, even though I hate them lol.
Thanks for putting this together.
I like crafting and putting things together with my grandchildren. The greenhouse kit is interesting and will have to check out this kit. What are the age requirements for these kits? The dollhouse kit is not suitable for my grandsons, the greenhouse kit is more suitable. The instructions look easy enough for anyone to follow.
Many thanks to you for giving us such a beautiful article about Robotime Miniature Dollhouse Kit- An Expanded Review Of Cathy’s Flower House. I think this is an enjoyable method for learning craftsmanship and art for kids. I like the flower house you have here they look quite cool, and can make an amazing birthday gift. I think this kind of site is incredible for schools and understudy ventures. I must say that this article is very educational and informative. I am going to bookmark it. Looking forward to more beautiful articles related to this in the future.Good Luck!
Thanks for reviewing Robotime Miniature Dollhouse Kit. I'm interested in buying several kits, one for me, and the others for my kids.
I'm very impressed with this toolkit. I mean, this Robotime Miniature Dollhouse Kit is not only for kids but for grown-ups as well, like me. Or, maybe they have other objects we can create and not just for dollhouse, like if you are a boy and you want to make a miniature hotel.
There's just one thing that I am thinking about this tool kit. What if I am a beginner and with beginners, sometimes you make mistake in your creation that you need to redo the process of creating your project. Do I need to buy two sets of the kit or are parts replacements available in Amazon or Ali-Express?
It feels great reading your article knowing fully well how my kids and I would have such fun arranging these miniature dollhouse together. We one a greenhouse in our compound and that alone would give us a better hint as to how we can make the dollhouse. I encourage such activities with kids because it creates bond between kids and parents when they do it together, and it also help in developing their mental health. Thanks for sharing.
Hello Gomer !,
It is so lovely isn't it, these miniature kits? I really like them as well.
About your question: I don't really think that you would need to buy 2 sets, as there was only part off a piece off furniture that wasn't correctly made. Slighty different color, which you can paint over and missing a few holes, which you can DIY with the dremel . It would be a bit silly to buy 2 sets just for that 😉
Happy crafting !
Hello Jannette!
The age requirment for these kits is 14 years minimum. You could try at a younger age, but then accompanied bye an adult would be much better ! Do not craft it with very small children, as the tiny pieces are easily put in young kids mouth !
Sure, you could have the greenhouse for your grandsons, but maybe the 3d puzzles from Robotime are more for boys , click here .
Thanks for your comment and happy crafting !
