Patty Reider at StencilGirl recently asked the stencil designers “What Made You Fall in Love with Art?” The answer could have possible inclusion in a newsletter that is shared with the StencilGirl clients and followers. It got me thinking!Maybe more than falling in love with art was becoming enamored with Making Things. When I was ten years old, I discovered a book in our local (Huber Heights, OH–our little town, New Carlisle, didn’t have a library) library called There’s a Decorator in Your Doll House by Melanie Kahane (Galahad Books,1968). I checked it out every two weeks for years. A few times a year, the librarian would make me leave it in the library for a whole week in case anyone else might want to check it out—an eternity. But in its pages, I learned to capably make dollhouse furniture out of cardboard, wooden spools, cupcake cups and pipe cleaners. I cobbled together mismatched earrings to make a chandelier, I used a perfume bottle lid to make a pretty vase. Repurposing found objects as things for my dollhouse made me look at my world differently: Everything around me became a potential art supply. Every spare minute was devoted to making things, and in the time I wasn’t doing that, I was daydreaming about what I might make next when I was back in my “studio” (the basement). I still do this today, but its art I make now, and not dollhouse furniture, and not in my mom’s basement!

I don’t have any picture of the things I made for my dollhouse so long ago, but I have ALWAYS made little chairs out of champagne cages. I did NOT make these–they are courtesy of Martha Stewart and Pinterest. They also represent a higher class of “champagne” than I ever had my hands on 🙂

Back cover…fun things to make!