Mel’s First Love (of Design)

People will sometimes ask me when I “became” a designer. My standard answer is that I’ve been a designer since I was about 9 years old.

In the fourth grade, I longed for a doll house, and to my surprise and excitement, my grandma bought me one for my birthday! It wasn’t the fancy (expensive) Victorian one I saw in our local hardware store, of all places. Instead, my grandma bought me a second-hand (much less expensive), boxy-looking dollhouse – much like the picture of the one below that I found on Reddit.

At first, I was a little sad not to have the fancy Victorian dollhouse I wanted, but I quickly came to cherish my more dilapidated dollhouse because I could “fix it up.”. Back then, my dollhouse was my sanctuary and source of something to do (when I wasn’t reading a book).

On weekends, my mom and grandma visited antique stores, flea markets and garage sales. I always tagged along and searched for tiny furniture and decorations for my dollhouse. To this day, I still gravitate to tiny trinkets. I’m also consistently drawn to art and old signs that nod or give ode to flea markets and antique malls. Take this painted cloth canvas I found at a local antique mall for $30 that now hangs in my bathroom. (I saw this same exact same piece of art in Black Mountain, North Carolina priced at $75, so I suspect I got a deal!)

To create art for my dollhouse, I snipped pictures from magazines and used toothpicks to frame them out and adhere them to the walls. I also cut out decorative paper and used good old reliable Elmer’s glue to “hang” new wallpaper. For hours and hours, I’d identify stuff around my full-size house to repurpose and design the interior of my miniature house.

I wish I had a picture of my childhood dollhouse to share with you, but sadly, all I have is my memory of it. I can’t recall what came of the dollhouse, but I know I didn’t take it with me the summer after sixth grade when I moved to my dad’s. I suspect I outgrew the dollhouse and we either donated it or more likely, we sold it at the community garage sale my grandma had at her house every year. Naturally, I loved helping my grandma get ready for her annual garage sale – arranging objects on tables, placing little white price stickers on things, and meeting the variety of locals happy to chat and wheel-and-deal the days of the sale.