Becoming a Miniaturist

(This is a blog from 2015 taken from my old website).

June 17, 2015

Ok, so several people I have spoken to have suggested I write a blog.  What about?  Well I'm not really sure, my life doesn't seem all that interesting, but then I tell someone that I'm going home to make 30 miniature spiders, they look at me as though I'm crazy and I realize that maybe I am a little unusual.  So here we go!!!!

As I lack confidence, I'll start with my family, two boys also a little unusual,  the oldest Ben loves to be thought of as a geek and lives and breathes Dr Who and Marvel films.  The other Daniel seven years younger who wants to learn all the flags of the world and nearly has.  Neither has much interest in miniatures but there is still time.  Then there is my lovely hubbie Steve who makes everything possible, gentle, kind, quiet, the backbone of everything. My general helper with everything apart from the making and painting.  Then we have my little Cocker Spaniel Pepper who keeps me company while I work. and lastly all my beautiful tropical fish who help me relax when the day has been stressful.  I am also very lucky to have lovely sisters and niece who look after the boys and Pepper when we go to miniature shows, proud parents who show off my work to everyone, and many more special family and friends. I am very luck now but life hasn't always been like this, things were very tough for many years.

I had a lovely childhood though, my sisters and brother are older than me by a few years, so I had to find things to entertain myself.  I used to make furniture for my dolls house out of egg cartons etc.  I loved my dolls house but it always annoyed me that  there were no stairs, how did the little people get up to the bedroom, they had to jump when the front was open.  This may have been the start of me being a little bit of a perfectionist, anything to do with art and craft had to be just right.  I went to Art College and studied graphic design, but didn't really know if that was what I wanted.  When I left I worked for a heraldry firm for a while, I also painted commissions of people's pets and painted pictures to sell.  And that was the start of the miniature bug I caught one day when a friend said "your paintings are so detailed, why don't you just paint miniatures". YES!!!!!!!!  At last I had found my niche.