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So today is the start of October – where has the time gone? It’s also the start of Blogtober, and whilst I’d like to be ambitious and post once a day, I think a target of twice a week is realistic and anything else is a bonus, right?

Well, what to write?

As so many of my fellow crafters in my little small biz world have done, I think it’s fitting to introduce myself. I’m Lee and I’m a miniaturaholic. I love making tiny houses.

I’ve told this tale many a time on my TikTok Live streams, but I started my making journey way back when my Dad gave my daughter a transit when she was 2 (She’s 18 now). I decided I was going to fix the Hornby trackmat down onto a board and do it properly. One thing lead to another and I started to get ambitious with the board and before I knew it had taken over half the garage.

Starting to build houses to add to the model, I began to look at downloadable kits from the internet – printed walls etc. Then, being a Graphic Designer, I started to look at making my own textures to make walls. I built a massive run of retaining wall on my layout, but no sooner had I finished it, I changed my mind. I wanted to make it look more real.

I started to look at how other model makers worked an found an excellent blog by a guy called Iain Robinson. He’d been model making professionally for decades (sadly now retired) and I learned so much from reading his blog and chatting with him. I followed some of his techniques and started to develop some of my own.

After a while, I started showing off the work I’d done on a Model Railway Forum and before long I’d been asked to make something for a fellow forum user.

First Ever Model Commission

Above is that Model. From this I was asked to make something similar, and it followed that over the next couple of years, I had a slow and steady series of small commissions. This dried up for a while until I saw someone post on Facebook that they were looking for a West Yorkshire based scratchbuilder. I sent a message and after a quick chat, I started out on a very enjoyable and lengthy project to recreate Denholme Station and all the associate buildings.

In March of 2020, when the Covid pandemic tied most of us to our homes, on a whim, I advertised on Twitter asking if anyone fancied having a model made of their own house.

Below, is the start of that particular journey, maybe I’ll tell you about that project next time…