Emily had a dollhouse that her Father built when she was young. It was a very simple design. It had eight rooms, four on each floor; each with two interior walls but no exterior walls so it was easy to reach inside. The furniture was a mishmash of handmade and plastic, with a few Tomy and Lundby pieces for good measure. When she was about ten years old, a friend received a beautiful dollhouse as a gift. Emily did not know it at the time but she is pretty sure it was a Greenleaf Pierce. Emily always loved it and wanted to play with it more then her friend did.  Her parents must have picked up on her rabid passion for this house. So they bought her a more "adult" dollhouse for Christmas when she was eleven. It was a scratch built house by a local carpenter. It was not anything fancy but it was still a real house as opposed to a toy. Emily loved that dollhouse. She spent years decorating it. When she moved from the East coast to California after graduation, she brought the dollhouse with her. The moving company had to build a special crate for it!

Emily used to think of herself as strictly a decorator. She enjoyed it more then the building. But now that she has been building houses for a few years, she thinks of herself as both. She loves decorating the inside. It is all about collecting the furniture to go in each room, daydreaming about different layouts and color schemes, and accessorizing so that it looks like someone really lives there. When she first started building houses, she wanted to get that part done quickly so she could move on to interior decorating. But somewhere along the way, she started to enjoy the building process. She does not necessarily like all the tedious steps that are involved but she likes the feeling of accomplishment that comes from seeing the house take shape. Emily loves to fantasize about what a house is going to look like and she loves to admire it when it is finally done. She enjoys the steps where you do relatively little but it has a big impact. An example would be when you dry fit a house. First it is just a pile of wood on the table, then it is an actual house in just a few minutes. Emily loves gluing individual shingles and laying individual floorboards. She says it is Zen like. She also thinks we might think that is weird. Emily, I love to zone out in front of a dollhouse with a pile of shingles and a bottle of glue. I can bang out a roof in no time and not realize where the time went. I get that.

Emily`s boyfriend was building an airplane at the same time that she was building the Orchid. They set up a card table in the corner of his hangar for her to work. Every weekend he`d work on the plane and she would work on the dollhouse. When she got frustrated with the instructions or did something wrong, it paled in comparison to his project. It was so helpful to have him there because he is a rational thinker and has a ton of power tools. Instead of throwing pieces in the trash out of frustration, he would help me figure it out. She still asks him for help when she cannot find a simple solution for a structural problem. He almost always comes up with a solution. I like to hear about couples that work together like that.

One of Emily`s miniature dreams is to work her way through all the houses in her stash. She tends to buy kits that she is not ready to build and they sit around for years. All of them are houses that she really wants to build, she just hasn't had the time, motivation, or space to do them. Someday, way off in the distant future, she would like to have all of them finished and on display. Emily admits that she takes a long time to finish a house, she is running out of spots to display them, and she keeps adding to her stash. She is thinking this may be a pipe dream. Someday she would love to scratch build a dollhouse. She has old Nutshell News issues that have plans for half scale Sears houses. She loves the look of several of them, but it seems so much more complicated than building from a kit.

Emily has finally completed her Fairfield this year. She would like to finish her puzzle house, the Westville, and get to work on the Hillside Victorian that she recently bought.  Her "plan" is to finish as many of the unfinished projects as she can, to make room for the new ones!  She has the Victorianna kit whispering to her but then she also wants to try one of the Greenleaf new half scale laser cut dollhouses... hehehe.  She says that the Fairfield is her favorite house, hands down. She started it soon after she completed the Orchid, so she was fairly inexperienced. She learned many things along the way. It was also her first half scale house, even though there`s less of a selection for supplies and furniture, in a way that is a plus for her. It makes Emily become more creative in her designs and execution of the house. It took her seven years to complete that house. It is on display in a prominent spot and it gets many compliments. Emily is proud of it.

I asked Emily if she had any advice for those novices out there that have not smelled a freshly opened box of dollhouse wood yet. It`s not as scary as it looks! She used to be completely intimidated by the galleries of more experienced miniaturists. Now that she has built some house, she has realized there is no "secret" to building beautiful dollhouses. It just takes patience. And don`t get down on yourself if something doesn't come out exactly the way you wanted it to. You can use what you learned this time on a future project.

You can check out all of Emily`s eye candy here in her gallery or at her website.

For her participation, Emily will receive a $25 gift certificate to the Greenleaf Store.

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