I don’t know why but I have always liked things in miniature form. I’d quite like a miniature village in my back garden or the job of making scaled models of buildings from white card. As a child I had a doll’s house which had 2 floors with 3 rooms on each floor. I remember being very frustrated that there was no hole in the ceiling above the staircase and therefore the dolls could never walk upstairs. The kitchen was decorated in the same flowery wallpaper as our kitchen, it had electric lights which often flickered and a red plastic chimney that fell off. Sadly, it must of been chucked out in favour of the more modern Sylvanian Families cottage, which is a shame as I’d quite like to do it up now.
A few months ago when returning home from dinner, I spotted a doll’s house shop in a charity shop window and boom! I had to have it! It has a traditional frontage with a single room and is a currently a food store. It came with the most beautiful miniature accessories, my favourite being the box of allotment produce. The walls are covered in wood chip and it has 3 electric lights in the ceiling. My mum has sent me some old doll’s house furniture I had kept from my childhood, the most humorous being a small wooden chair of which at the age of 18 months I tried to sit on. It is how I envisage the appearance of my first start up shop and whilst I can’t not currently afford or have the knowledge to run my own shop, I can still dream about how it will be.
My plan is to remove the roof, sand the walls smooth and attach a latch so the front can still swing open. That’s about as much as I’ve planned! I’m going to do it properly though and draw a scaled plan in my A3 squared paper pad, so watch out for updates!
Isobel Harada 