Big ideas for teeny houses: Pro tips from a miniature artist

17 Feb 2022

As anybody entering the Resene Teeny House competition will know, a smaller interior decorating canvas doesn’t mean a scaling down of the materials you can, or want to use.

For experienced miniaturist Jill Fraser, who has been making dollhouses and miniatures to go in them for almost 30 years, the search for interesting new ways to use materials in her projects is ongoing.

Jill’s Arts Movement house painted in a Resene Triple Concrete exterior which she says gives a very real concrete-look finish. The window trims are Resene Burgundy.

It led her to explore a range of different Resene products and how they might be used on miniatures. She then put those ideas into an article for her bi-monthly magazine Miniature Time Traveller, which is also the name of Jill’s website.

Some of Jill’s Resene product tips for miniaturists include:

• Wood stains like Resene Colorwood give realistic finishes to small furniture and beams.
• Resene FX Metallic Magma is a good coppery shade that can also work well as rusty metal or as accents on doorknobs and furniture legs. It works well on wood, card or 3D printed items.
• Resene FX Metallic Pioneer is a good dark, green-grey while other go-to shades in the Resene FX Metallics range for realistic metal finishes are Resene Aluminium, Resene Atom and Resene Bright Charcoal
• Resene FX Blackboard Paint has a good natural finish that’s not too glossy. It can be buffed up with wax if you want a sheen.
• Resene Karen Walker Chalk Colour paint needs no sanding, priming or sealing. Use one to two coats then finish with Karen Walker Soft Wax or Vintage Wax.
• Top tip: To keep testpots from drying out on finishing your job, cover the paint with a thin layer of water before screwing on the lid.

Resene ColorShop inside a paint bucket by Glenys Hill, Oamaru, New Zealand. Glenys worked for Resene and her boss was delighted with this little Resene ColorShop. The miniature featured in Jill’s magazine Miniature Time Traveller.

Jill also likes that Resene testpots - the size popular with miniaturists - all contain waterborne paint with no animal products or by-products and are eco-friendly with Environmental Choice NZ approval - which makes them good for those wanting vegan or non-toxic paints.

Jill, who has a Diploma of Fine Arts and has worked as a commercial artist and architectural draftsperson, started building miniatures 30 years ago.

In her diverse career she also worked in advertising, started up her own businesses, including Murdoch James Estate Winery and has also renovated many properties.

“After I ‘retired’ from the big stuff, around 2016, I have been concentrating on my dollhouses and magazine,” she says.

For the exterior of this Lavender House, Jill used Resene Barely There, with windowsills in Resene Chapta And Verse. The roof and awnings are Resene Gun Powder.

For Jill the appeal of working on miniatures and dollhouses comes from the fact it engages all the skills she uses in life size such as designing and building houses, knitting, sewing, sculpting, painting (fine arts) and making furniture.  “All these skills find expression in my miniature houses,” she says.

This sweet and very realistic miniature drinks trolley is painted in Resene FX Blackboard Paint.

“I often make my own furniture like chairs, tables, cabinets, sofas and armchairs.  I buy glassware and pottery items because I cannot make them myself. 

“I buy exhibition pieces made by artisans when I get to an overseas miniature exhibition. Sadly not lately,” she says.

When it comes to choosing colour schemes for her miniature projects Jill is driven by trying to ensure the colours she chooses are right for the decade she’s building in. “Resene has a wide range of colours so I’m never at a loss,” she says, adding that lighter colours tend to dominate.

Jill designs and builds her own dollhouses, and her tip for others considering the same, is similar to the advice any home builder or renovator is likely to get - come up with a plan first! That way you’ll have a sense of how big it’s going to be and what it’ll be made of.

When it comes to miniatures, scale is just as important as size, particularly if you’re wanting to kit your dollhouse out in any purchased items.

A pair of Jill’s miniature 3D printed lions, both painted in Resene FX Metallic Magma with the one on the right enhanced with Resene FX Metallic Pioneer.

Globally, dollhouse scales are standardised;  12^th scale, 24^th scale or 48^th scale, she says and most miniature items for sale on sites like Ebay or Etsy will be made to those scales as well.

For more tips and advice Jill, recommends that anybody considering building or restoring a dollhouse join one of the many miniaturists’ clubs around New Zealand.  “The members are lovely; always willing to share information and techniques.”

Find out more miniaturetimetraveller.com

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Don’t forget Resene’s Teeny House competition is running until 31 March so there’s still time to enter your creative design using one of our Teeny House models. 

Find out more here and watch some of our designers talk about their Teeny House creations on Habitat.tv

Published: 17 Feb 2022