Jump to content

11/3/07 When were you 1st exposed to Minis?


Minis On The Edge

Recommended Posts

I used to be in to star wars and always wanted a house for Luke :o So i built one from foam core. It was awful :o But i was only 12. :p

I have now been permanently hooked.

And can't stand star wars. :photo:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

when i was a child we wud go to visit my grandad whe used to take pics of buildings in his town then he wud build min copies of them. we wernt allowed to play with them. then my dad spent a few weeks of our fortnightly visits building me a doll house but i wasnt allowed to play with that one either untill it was built the next time i went to visit he had put it on the bonfire, he wasnt happy with it. then years later he bought me a sindy house that had a bathroom and kitchen on the first floor and a living room and dining room on the next one then a bed room and a wardrobe on the last floor and on the roof it had a garden area that i put a swing sofa and a bbq. i was allowed to play with that one!

my mum and i wud make our own dollhouse out of boxes and anything crafty we cud find.

then i got sick almost two years ago and i have now found that i am able to do do some crafty stuff so i decided id try to make dollhouses and learn how to make min things and it is great it keeps me occupied and when im too sore to move i can just sit on the couch and play nice. and when i cant do that i can sit and think about what im going to do an draw up some designs untill im well enough to do more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was really young and My grandmother gave me a Fisher Price Dollhouse. I still have the dollhouse packed away ! I need to get it out and take photos.!!

It was a light blue and 3 stories high with a spiral staircase.! Under the kitchen floor was a place for storage. I LOVE that house.!!

Kellee

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I was about 6 or 7 and my mother built my first dollhouse out of orange crates. The furniature was leftover pieces of wood, decorated with material leftovers. When we moved in 1954 from Michigan to Illinois there wasn't enough to take it with. One sad day for me. When I was 12 I got to go to the musem in Chicago and saw the dollhouse there. I wanted one more than ever. In 1988 a woman I bowled with had a dollhouse that she wanted to give away because here husband gave her a Becan Hill for her birthday. I felt like a kid again. I had a dollhouse again. I have built 2 store bought houses (have only the Ponderosa), built 2 log cabins from scratch (sold them), 6 roomboxes from kits, and 2 that I built from scratch. I guess you could say I've been hooked for over a half a centry. I really love makeing things from scratch even if they don't look as good as a pros does. I figure if I'm happy with it that's all that counts. I will never be as good as a lot of the talent I've seen in here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My grandfather built a dollhouse from "Scientific American" plans when I was 3 years old. My mother painted on silver windows and we decorated it with cut-outs from magazines. I was making furniture out of cardboard by the time I was 5. I never stopped playing with my dollhouses. I have been building, re-building, giving away, donating and trading ever since. Sometimes I wish I had kept all the house I made. I could have a museum. At least I still have my 56 year old original!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first introduction to minis was in the form of all the playscale minis I got as hand me downs from the neighbor across the street, in the bookshelf turned dollhouse made by her father.

I had tons of fun making little things for that house all through my childhood, until I too passed it on to a little girl down the street to have her own fun with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was an only child of older parents and spent a lot of time on my own. I started making small "houses" and "towns" with dominoes and cards. Then using checkers and such as "furniture". I had a metal dollhouse as a child but dont remember what make it was and again used dominoes etc. for furniture. When I first got married my husband (now ex) bought me a brownstone kit that ended up in the basement never opened. So the first year I didnt have to use my tax refund check for my daughters college fees I bought myself a kit. That's still not finished. But over the years I've bought nice pieces of furniture and a kitchen kit. And drooled over the magazines. Now I've just started building a Brookwood. And I'm going to finish it!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had metal dollhouses since I can remember. My best friend and I used to play together all the time. Even when I didn't do anything with a dollhouse as I got older, I had minis around. My friends would call me Darby O'Gill because I loved anything small.

In 1979 I found a Crafco house I put together (it looked awful but I loved it) and then I found the miniautre shop next to where I worked at the time and I've had one house or the other ever since. I was very lucky to live in the Bay Area where you could go up one side of the Bay and down the other side in a day long road trip and hit about 10 or more miniature shops along the way. I guess most of them are gone now.

I was also very lucky to be able to see the gorgeous houses the miniature shop owner's son would make and also to see practically every house and wallpaper (at the time) close up and in person. Plus we had the Good Sam show once a year and also a hobby store in the area where Matt took his small corner in there and expanded it till they had a very sizable bunch of miniatures. So I was exposed to an awful lot of ideas and houses and interior decoration.

I wish there was more here in the Seattle area, but now there's the computer and that helps.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 9 years later...

At age 30 at the Toys museum in Sintra Portugal. My husband waited for 2 hours as I stared into the glass cases of minis.  He took a picture of me sitting in front of it. 

Santa brought me the Westville that Christmas.........  I can't get enough of minis,  I even have a 1:144 Storybook in my closet. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

As a child I had always wanted one of those metal dollhouses, but we were poor farmers and couldn't afford it.  Besides, my mother didn't want to spend so much money on a toy that I would soon outgrow.  

Many years later, when my daughter was 5, I was at a new craft store in the area (first of its kind) and walked down the miniatures aisle....totally in awe of the tiny little things and the grand houses!  I went home that day with an Artply Barrington.  Within a short time I realized that this house was going to be MINE!  My daughters never did get their own dollhouse. LOL

Several days ago I was visiting my mom and telling her about my latest dollhouse rehab project...and she remarked "We really should have bought that dollhouse when you were little because you obviously would have played with it for a long time!"     :) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a child I wanted a dollhouse and one Christmas I got one.I hated it, it was ugly and flimsy just down right horrible. I rememeber trying real hard to seem happy but my Mum realized I was not.. My Dad said he would try and return it to the shop and I could pick something else.

Periodically the subject came up and I explained what I had in my head .

It took the birthday after  my next one, about 20 months later and I got my house. My Dad had a local man build it. and it was almost identical to the one I had in my head. I was thrilled. I should make a sketch of it, I hadn't thought about it for years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I played with my Keystone dollhouse with its nightlight bulb fixture until my mother took it out of my room when I was a high school sophomore.  When I asked her why she informed me I was much too old to be playing with dollhouses and she had put it away until I had a little girl to play with it.  She put it in our leaky, bu-filled garage under I don't know what l other "stuff".  I had all boys, but by then the wet and the bugs had destroyed the dollhouse.

Now that I'm in my 70s I play with all of mine whenever I wish.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At my age I sit in a chair and the houses are on tables; whilst I can still it on the floor, getting down & up again provides the rest of my family far more entertainment than the effort's worth.  Since the houses continue to tell their stories long after the construction part is done, it's a bit more like watching an ongoing soap opera.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was probably 5 years old when I received a tin lithograph house. I remember iti was dark on the inside.  and the little tabs all came out all the time. I would get so frustrated when my newly decorated room wood unhinge and slide around. My cat liked to sleep in as well,so it was doomed to scrap pilte.

I had the fisher Price playhouse,school and barn. Those were fun until the Barbies arrived.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was 7 and it was Christmas morning. I had gotten up at 4 am or so to see what loot "Santa" had left for us. I got halfway down the stairs and thats when I saw it: a fully assembled Tennyson. It was the dollhouse I had ooh'd and aahh'd over months earlier. My poor dad, who I found out years later had been up all night finishing it, was asleep on the floor in front of it. It took everything I had not to squeal out in glee and wake up my dad. We went out the next day and bought paint for it. We painted it a beautiful Colonial blue with white trim. I loved that house so much and still do. I wish I still had it. I've tried off and on to build houses and as much as I'm loving my Orchid Primrose build now nothing will ever compare to the feeling I had when I saw my first.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

My grandma and aunt made me a dollhouse. They even wallpapered it and crocheted a bunch of rugs. I was really young when they gave it to me and I spent years going to the local miniatures shop to furnish every room. Sadly, that store left our local mall a long time ago...but I still have the dollhouse and would like to give it to a future child.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 8 months later...

I had visited one of the few parks in England that had a miniature village in it, from then I was hooked. age just 7.  I am now building my own here in the UK but it is more to do with Christmas, I am building a Christmas Village. I will show pictures after it is launched publicly in 2019, until then I am unable to show pictures, But I may show works in progress on the contents from time to time. I have gone on in life now to be a designer of all things miniature and i would not have it any other way. x

Edited by Ilisha
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...

When I was maybe 5 years old we were getting ready to move out of an old house we had been renting in Puryear, Tennessee.  My parents called us up into the attic, where I saw at least 6 or 7 little houses parked like cars along both lengths of the attic space.  They mostly had cheap, plastic injection molded furnishings, but the idea of small versions of real things caught my imagination.  Several decades, many model kits and a few construction trades later, I build a house.  I built it the hard way, but I built it. :D

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...