Words by Kat Picot
Images by Christina Spivak
Christina’s childhood doll’s house had been languishing in storage when she first reunited with it back in 2011. It was worked on for a time, inspired by interiors blogs and an online doll’s house renovation challenge “I’m a Giant!” hosted by designer, then blogger, Emily Henderson. There was so much to consider and Christina took her time before approaching the little house again. After recommitting to the project in recent years, Christina is now gradually breathing life into this special doll’s house, sharing her creative exploits on Instagram under the moniker TinyEclectic – a name that perfectly encapsulates her style.
The heirloom house was hand built by Christina’s father as a gift for her tenth birthday. A carpenter by trade, he was unphased by the house being intended as a child’s toy. Painstakingattention to detail was paid. Windows and their frames were built from scratch, recesses cutready for tiny panes of ‘glass’. The craftsman approached the build and its components with thesame level of ingenuity and care as if it had been the real thing. Subsequently, the house wasnot completed in time for Christina’s birthday, not that she cared, gladly playing with it for yearsto come in it's not-quite-finished state. Christina says;“I don’t really think of my house assomething that I want to ‘finish’ finish. I want it to be changeable, because my approach is a combination of things. I like photography a lot, I like the styling a lot and I like the challenge of making the miniatures myself.”A creative professional and jeweller, Christina already possessed a skill set that lends itself perfectly to creating finely detailed miniature work. Some of her project highlights from herInstagram profile include a gorgeous Capiz shell light fitting – a statement light feature and, one imagines, an impossibly fiddly project to execute! Her miniature interiors share a signature aesthetic of seamlessly co-ordinated neutral and monochrome colour palettes teamed withlayers of textures, ranging from natural wood finishes of exposed timber beams to high glossfloor tiles. The final flourishes are found in statement pieces of furniture and decorative flair. Adesigner daybed, or dried flower chandelier. Challenging herself to create her own pieces,Christina often takes inspiration from contemporary furniture designers, replicating favouriteswith her own added touches, in stunning detail. Her interests are not limited to contemporarydesign though. She says;My favourite thing is making stuff, especially if it’s made out of trash. Ihave a bag full of bottle caps. My husband’s afraid to throw anything away!” Hesitant to launch straight into a renovation of her beloved childhood doll’s house, Christina sourced a second pre-loved doll’s house on the buying and selling site Craigslist.
She added a Real Good Toys “blue plate special” to her 1:12 scale property portfolio. This house, the guineapig if you will, was for applying new techniques and navigating some trial and error as she fell further down the rabbit hole of miniature interiors. Does the list of works-in-progress end there?Laughing, Christina says:“I said to myself I was not going to fill my house with doll houses!”A familiar broken vow among hobbyists everywhere! Some custom room boxes have since joined the two mini home renovations. Initially intended as a loft space, one cement floor scene presented fresh avenues to explore with photography. Christina explains;“I had used it for afew pictures when I thought ‘Oh! Room boxes are great! You actually have ROOM to get angles and take new photos.’”As for future projects? There is one more waiting in the wings, a gift from Christina’s husband who’d wanted to surprise her a few years prior to the inception of TinyEclectic. Her mother’s advice to him was simple, (a woman after our own hearts):“Get her the biggest, best one you can find!”The result? A brand new Greenleaf Garfield kit, a 1:12 scale but simultaneously gargantuanVictorian farmhouse house. The scope and commitment of the project has so far kept it in that box which, incidentally, comes with a warning about measuring doorways before the build takesplace lest it should get stuck inside the room forever. Christina, laughing, says;“That’s really scary to me! When a doll’s house comes with a warning, do I really want to go there?!”
While both doll’s house and room boxes thus far are a beautifully executed display of neutral tones, these interiors are anything but beige in character. With their elements styled perfectly together it’s Christina’s eye for photography that truly sets these miniature scenes apart. Early in her career, Christina landed a job with a photography studio. She says;“I was a ‘shopper’. A photographer or a stylist might send you out to shop, and I got really into watching what they were doing. I started staying late after work and practising in the studio, so I was self-taught.Then when that studio went out of business I actually went back to school. I did take some photography classes but it wasn’t studio photography, so I learned more at night on my own in this studio. There was this photographer that I would show endless pictures to and ask, ‘what about this one? What about that one? How does this look?’ And he was like ‘Oh see you need to heed out a way of breaking down compositions, not just objects but in terms of light and dark, they’re objects too.”
It’s this creative use of light and dark that has become a signature part of Tiny Eclectic’s images. Each photo appears with thoughtful lighting effects, dappled shade or shadows casting dramatic shapes and further layers of interest across the scene. The rooms themselves look so inviting; vignettes from boutique hotels or a beautifully styled spa retreat and most definitely a huge departure from what we would traditionally imagine the inside of a doll’s house to look like.
Despite her clear creative prowess, at the time of writing (Summer 2022), Christina still considers herself a relative newbie to the miniature world and has great admiration for her peers, gleaning much pleasure from the work of others. She says;“ I really like how everybody approaches things so differently and every miniaturist is actually also a photographer, an architect, an engineer, an artist, an interior designer – there’s a lot that goes into it. And no matter what the skill level, there’s always something to appreciate in everybody’s pictures. My favourite thing when I look at other people's work is the super creativity! Seeing somebody take something that is just a real-sized object but they see it in a completely different way. They see its hidden possibilities. There are alot of amazing things done with Cricut [cutting] machines and 3D printers where people canmake things look just like the real deal, but I really LOVE looking at the things that are made upfrom scraps and creativity. That just adds a layer of magic to the whole thing.”
Follow Christina’s renovations and miniature work on Instagram @Tinyeclectic
