How Did You Become Involved in the World of Miniatures?

[tilliejam62]

I read one of the featured articles in the Greenleaf Gazette newsletter concerning the December Member of the Month, Claudia (CheckMouse). It sparked my interest in wanting to know how other members became interested in the world of miniatures and what was the very first mini project they made.

Way back in 1969 I saw a miniature display in the window of a drugstore in Ridgewood, NJ where I was living at the time. I was so captivatied by those tiny little replicas of real life items such as a tiny little box of Kelloggs Cornflacks. I was smittened. It was several years later that I tried my hand at making my first mini room in an old, wooden, four-shelf bookcase someone had discarded. I only made one room, a bedroom, on the top shelf. I moved away but could not take the bookself so I gave it away. Some years after that I started making roomboxes and shadow boxes and the rest is history.

Please share your stories.

Edited December 6, 2011 by tilliejam62

[KathieB]

I've always had an interest in miniatures but didn't get a dollhouse kit to build until 2005, at age 64. I got it built to the point where the electricity needed to be added and got cold feet. A friend asked me to help her prepare a large dollhouse for a charity auction. Working with her and her husband, who had several completed dollhouses under their belts, was a wonderful apprenticeship. It gave me the confidence to finish my own kit (a Greenleaf Orchid) and plunge ahead. Although real life sometimes puts the miniature adventures on hiatus, I haven't looked back. One of my favorite projects was rehabbing a dollhouse made by my father for my sister and me sometime in the mid 1950s as a quilt shop.

[havanaholly]

Didn't we have this thread topic somewhere a while back? (meaning, it's buried in the archives...)

I had a dh when I was a child that I played with until my mother decided I was "too old" for it and "put it away" (in a leaky S FL garage where what the moisture didn't destroy the bugs & other critters did). Fast forward to DH & I deciding to build a dh for the eldest granddaughter for Christmas the year she was 6. It was clunky & scratch-built and she loved it. Next I built her a Dura-Craft SF555 that we gave her when she was 11 (I don't believe anyone ever grows "too old" for a dh!). It is history, but I was bitten by the bug and since then I feel naked if I'm not building or making something mini.

[MerriMagic]

Oh I'm sure the topic has been brought up several times, but I guess we have to remember that finding such threads can be really hard sometimes, because they are hidden under mountains of pages. Putting in search words doesn't always succeed in bring up some of the better threads. Don't know why this is..perhaps search engines are taking too much for granted that they know better than us, what to display?

It's fun to hear how others got started. Me, I became disabled, and needed something to do, so as not to go crazy while being stuck at home much of the time. The computer has been a godsend, and while I started out spending lots of time in a virtual world...(SecondLife), I found I needed something physical to keep my mind busy, and I wanted to see something solid come into my world, rather than living in a virtual environment the way I had been, ( It was fun, but sometimes I want something I can look at and play with, without going online.)

So I found a dollhouse forum, (this one) and I guess "the rest is history", as they say.

(Who ARE they, anyhoo?)

Jeanne

[CatColorado]

I've been thinking about this, what really started it all... you know, like... the addiction and all.

It was an unfinished dollhouse that started it.

It was supposed to be a Christmas present for me from my parents.

It never did get finished. Eventually it fell apart.

So that's why I have so many houses. Every one of them represents the house that was never finished, my neverending quest to complete that first house.

Which can never happen since it is long gone.

Or maybe I just really like dollhouses. Hard to say.

[Shy Spirit]

I was always mesmerized by anything tiny. When I was old enough to "play gently" with it, my mother gave me her childhood dollhouse. A beautiful, handmade dollhouse that I absolutely revered. It was the most wonderful thing I ever owned. It was full of unusual miniatures from all over the world. My mother's uncle (or great-uncle?) had built it himself, and furnished/decorated it with items he acquired during his Navy career. I played with it lovingly, right up until we left England. (I was ten.) The dollhouse was given to the young daughter of my mother's cousin, to keep it in the family. I was heartbroken. It "disappeared" a few years later. Like Cat, I am caught in the loop of a search to replace that long-lost treasure. Since no other house can ever replace it ... et cetera.

[More Minis Dollhouses]

I was always interested in miniatures, since I was a little girl. I remember I had a collection of the tiniest little animal figurines on my nightstand. I had a few "play" dollhouses which I loved too. My very first grown up miniature project was the Willowcrest. I thought it would be a good project to keep my mind occupied after my mothers passing in 1996. I didn't know at the time what I was getting myself into when I fell in love with the Willowcrest kit at a craft store. Needless to say, the dollhouse turned into a disaster and I did not try another one until I bought an RGT kit some years later, which I had better success with.

I was still IN LOVE with Greenleaf dollhouses though and I did not want to give up until I was able to build one. I had searched online for someone to build it for me but the prices were through the roof. My husband encouraged me to buy the Beacon Hill and give it a second shot. I did after reading all I could about building dollhouses on this very forum. I had a better outcome this time around and as they say, the rest is history!

More than a dozen dollhouses later, I still LOVE this craft and these houses.

[dooder85]

I love anything small that is supposed to be big. On my desk I have a miniature Iron Mountain bankers box, like I said - anything small!

My interest was piqued by the HOM ads in readers digest, I remember pining for these tiny pieces of furniture to the point of almost being in pain over it. 2 houses in, I think it's more of a hobby that lets me exercise my OCD side, everything can be as intricate as I want. Everything stays where I put it. Also it's a field of creation which isn't terribly common here in Alberta, and I do like to be a bit avante-garde in my hobbies

I love that a project can take months / years, so unlike painting.

[mininecessities]

I hope this doesn't sound diabolical but when I was a child, I use to fantasize about having these tiny little (yeah about 1:12 scale) alive people. I have no idea where it came from, some movie perhaps? ( Perhaps it was when I wanted a doll called Wendy Walker, which my parents couldn't afford) Of couse pulling myself back to reality I knew that was impossible. I didn't even know there was such a thing as scale miniatures other than the model railroad my dad and brother had which I loved soooo much!

My next exposure was as a young woman selling Avon. A lady invited me into her house and showed me the most awesome dollhouse, complete with furniture, lights, people. I was

in a trance looking at it. Leaving her house, I knew it must be a very expensive thing to aquire so I tried to forget about it.

The next, was a few years later I saw an ad for House of Miniatures............it was like a plan you could join to collect them. I started collecting them but for some reason I never put one together. Being a perfectionist I just didn't know if I could do it right. Had to move one time, and sold them to help get money to move on. Later through the years I picked a couple kits up at yard sales as I was sad to have given up that collection. Even though I had never found the time to put one together I think just the intrigue of seeing all those little pieces in the box was all I needed.

My first house was from a plan book, and for a long time I didn't even know you could buy pre made miniatures or parts to make them. As everyone else says..........the rest was history.

Cheryl

[SallyG]

When I was a child I had a Marx metal dollhouse, which I loved. During my second pregnancy, I decided to build a dollhouse for my (anticipated) girl. I had a boy. And then 2 more boys. And I never stopped building dollhouses. I have done 30+ houses. I am now reveling in my Fairfield kit...which is going to be perfect!

[mininecessities]

That is cool! You are pampering that "Little Girl Within" which we all need to do, take good care of the "Child Within"

When I was a child I had a Marx metal dollhouse, which I loved. During my second pregnancy, I decided to build a dollhouse for my (anticipated) girl. I had a boy. And then 2 more boys. And I never stopped building dollhouses. I have done 30+ houses. I am now reveling in my Fairfield kit...which is going to be perfect!

[THmini2]

My great uncles (grandpa's brother) dollhouse (that he built from scratch) was in a museum here along with many others. I fell in love with them. I found one (built not painted or done inside) in a yard sale and worked on that one. It fell apart after a time as it was put together with hot glue. I didn't know back then about taking it apart and regluing it. It was such a mess after that and the wood had split in some areas. Of course that woould have meant re-doing everything. I was just so disappointed. It wasn't until I married and my husband bout me another one that I got back into it. It was also something that we like to do together. He likes to build them . Except anything that I do for a contest. Those I work on alone. The house that I bought at the yard sale was very good for me as my grandpa had just died and it helped me get through a lot of sadness.

[Guest Happy Heart]

My first miniature kit was the Chrysnbon Treadle Sewing Machine & Dressform kit. I bought it only because I loved sewing. My first dollhouse kit was the Buttercup Cottage (a kit I strongly despise).

I've since advanced to building my own designs from scratch or kit bashes and to making my own high-quality miniature furniture.

I don't know HOW anyone can ever say they are bored.

[GirlPiper]

I was taken to the Field Museum in Chicago as a very small girl and fell in love with Colleen Moore's Fairy doll castle. I've a;ways ben fascinated with very tiny things from Match Box cars to model trains and little plastic figures. Anyway, my then-husband was in the Navy; I was pregnant and not allowed off the sofa (very far from my home) so I started fooling around with the scraps from his balsa wood airplane models in California, then built and furnished the first house during my son's naptimes in Memphis. A move to Wisconsin and still building, but at every move the houses were left behind. Kept some of the little things I'd built in the 70's, and after a pretty severe coronary last spring decided the time was right to build another house and the furnishings. Found my old patterns, some of the tools, and an Orchid kit this summer and here we are. It's like riding a bike--it all came back pretty fast, but I am impressed some 38 years later with the materials and tools available at the hobby stores and online. We used to have to wait for letters to have contact with other hobbiests. I'm glad you're all just a click away.

[mygrommi]

I, too, had a metal dollhouse as a child which I adored - probably a Marx I have no idea what happened to it.

In the early 1980s when my daughter was 9 years old, a dollhouse shop opened down the street from our house and I was captivated by the houses and the furnishings. Since I could not afford to buy a dollhouse, I ordered a plan from a magazine and asked the high school wood shop class teacher if the class would build the house shell for me. I loaned out the plans and never got them back - wish I had them.

The shop class built the shell, cut out the windows and doors and I painted, shingled, papered, wired and decorated the house. I loved every minute of it. I visited the dollhouse shop often and learned so much from the owner. She hired me to work in the shop when she had to be away. I learned to make everything I possibly could for my daughter's dollhouse. She loved the house and spent many hours playing with it. We moved several times and the dollhouse always went with us.

It was large to begin with, but I later saw an article in a miniature magazine on how to add a basement, so I added a cabinet-type basement to the house which really made it huge.

I made a couple of room boxes and then took a full time job that took me away from miniatures for 20+ years. About 10 years ago, I undertook a roombox that took me 2 years to complete. Since then I have re-habbed dollhouses for 2 of my granddaughters and am currently working on re-habbing my daughter's huge house for one of her daughters.

Now my daughter has another daughter (2 years old) and I have a dollhouse in my attic awaiting a re-hab which will be for her. I'm also about to start on a small roombox that will be a gift.

I also have another house that will be mine to finish when I retire. Then there's my log house and the house rescued from the thrift store to complete . . . . so many dollhouses - so little time.

I'm enjoying reading everyone's unique stories.

Renea

[mom2blu]

When I was a little kid my mom did minis, I adored them. I still here about when I was 2 and "fixed" her piano by painting it white. Eventually I got my own at around 11 or 12. It never was finished, then I sold it around age 16. (I think it was a Duracraft Newburg) Then again around age 21 or 22 I bought a Brimble's Merchantile to do. I've always wanted to run a certain type of store, so I was going to make it in mini. Then I had a son who came our screaming and never stopped, lol. In the summer I got a new dollhouse to do as a family playhouse, then I found the Beacon Hill I've always wanted and got it in July as a 29th Birthday present to myself.

Now my whole family does minis! My 5 year old declares that he's the miniaturist in the household. My husband has started to brainstorm ideas for the family house. And I whittle away my hours on one of the 4 houses and stores we have going.

[lauker]

When I was a kid, I was really really into dioramas and LOVED looking at the tiny, detailed dioramas at the Smithsonian when we went on a family vacation one year. I remember being really impressed with the tiny Time magazines and New York Times sitting in the living room of one particular scene.

I also had plastic dollhouses when I was growing up (it was the '80s) - including a Blue Box dollhouse and a Fisher-Price hand-me-down. I always had my eye on the wooden ones in the catalog though. *sigh* Around the age of 8-9, I got this one book out of the library called "There's a Decorator in Your Dollhouse!" and built lots of tiny furniture out of everyday stuff even though I didn't have the right scale of dollhouse to put it in. I guess my imagination was my dollhouse. My big sister also had a friend who had a beautiful house that I liked to play with when we visited her. I also seem to remember my sister putting together miniature furniture (which may have been HoM) when I was a kid. I should ask her about that.

Anyway, fast forward about 20 years and my (now) fiance and I were checking out antique shops in Maine and I found a beautiful finished dollhouse which made me flash back to my childhood. It rekindled the wonder and interest I had in miniatures! I went home and looked online for info on dollhouses, found this forum, as well as a few others, and found that there was a dollhouse shop in NH (Earth and Tree) which I visited and bought a shell to decorate which became my herb shop. Now the rest is history. I am up to 3 dollhouses (including the Greenleaf houses Glencroft and Canterbury), I've made roomboxes for family and am busy trying all kinds of new items for my scenes and to sell in my Etsy shop. So, yeah, I definitely caught that bug! :-D

[Just One More]

We moved so much when I was little, the only thing I had like a dollhouse was a book case my Grandmother let me use when we lived with her for awhile. I used it for the little beds and furniture I made from match boxes. I had a wind up metal piano with Daisy Mae that danced when you wound it up. I took her off the piano and used her as my dollhouse lady. This was in 1947. Everywhere we moved I had some kind of box I made into a dollhouse. I didn't start building real dollhouses until I was about fifty years old and have been doing them ever since. I have 13 finished and furnished houses now and would love to start another but don't know where I'd find the room. I've lost count how many I've built and later sold. My other hobby is dolls so my house looks like a toy store.

[Lady Grey]

When I was about 8 years old (1975), my dear grandmother bought me a miniature dollhouse for Christmas. She bought furniture for all four rooms. It was a modest two story house with four rooms and a slight narrow space between the top floor ceiling and the roof. I just loved it. She bought me five dolls which included a mom and a dad, a grandmother and a grandfather, and a baby. I have always cherished that experience. Since then I have darted in and out of miniature stores and wanted to build my own. Finally, I bought a kit last year and constructed my own. I built the Victoria's Farmhouse from RGT. I love the world of minis.

[MarieMinis]

Miniature Collector Jan/Feb 1998 with Brooke Tucker's vignette on the cover - I stopped in my tracks at the bookstore. I was there to pick up the latest Architectural Digest but I couldn't believe what I was seeing in that magazine!!

That same issue featured the work of Jon Fish and Larry Osborn. It cemented my fascination with architectural and interior realism in miniature.

[Caseymini]

When I was little, my dad had to move from Michigan to Arizona because of health issues. We sold a farm and bought a 15 foot trailer that we lived in for several years. The table at one end of the trailer made into a bed. That's where I slept. I think that my parents bought me my first dollhouse to make up for not having a room of my own... The house and furniture were made of very heavy cardboard and lithographed. Very colorful and Victorian. That was what started it all. It was gotten rid of when we moved into a "real" house. I have always wondered exactly what that house was and where it was made. I haven't a clue...

Fast forward to 1979. I happened to spot a magazine in a drug store. It was called "The Miniature Magazine". With that, I discovered that "normal" adults were building dollhouses. And nobody thought they were crazy... Well almost nobody...

I remember that the magazine had plans for a house called "Pepperwood Farm". I drooled over that house. It was just a simple farmhouse, but I wore the magazine out, looking at it.

Then I remembered that I had a great excuse for building a dollhouse. My daughter had just turned five and Christmas was 5 months away. I kept telling myself that it was for her...it really was. I just wanted to have the fun of building it.

Since I didn't have any experience, I thought it best to buy a kit. I dont remember the name, but it was a simple, straightforward three story with four rooms and an attic. I made the furniture. Carved a bathroom set out of balsa. Most of the furniture was balsa too. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as a miniature store. April loved it.

That was the beginning. I then got her a larger kit for us to make together. She lost interest and I had a nice plantation house on my hands. I couldn't let it go to waste! One thing led to another. Hooked for life! The last time I tried to count, I counted houses, shops, room boxes and vignettes... I stopped at 64! And I don't think that I got them all... Does the word overentheustatic ring a bell?

[rodentraiser]

I can't remember not having a dollhouse. I had a metal one before I knew what it was. I remember being jealous of my friend next door who had one of those enclosed single level houses where you used a magnetic wand and moved the people around in the house from underneath. My first kit bashing started with the metal house. I used to turn the it up on its end and make an apartment building. It amazed me how the spaces changed just because the house was in an different position.

Then I had my Petite Princess set until my brothers broke it up and my mom gave away my metal dollhouse and all the furniture and people because I was"too old" to play with them (I was 17 - that's not too old!). At that point I moved out of my parents home and went to California and for a couple years, I collected model horses and showed my dog in obedience. That was in 1974. In 1980, I was back into dollhouses and never really quit again. My mother and grandmother never understood it. They thought if I had one house, I didn't need anymore. I was barely allowed to have two model horses when I lived at home. And to top it off, I still love pocket pets, too. My mother still wants to know when I'll outgrow all these childish things. I tell her never, because that's the day I'll be old.