(Elizabeth Hjort – Bakery Putz)

Visions of Sugarplums Are Alive and Well

by Pam North

Elizabeth Hjort has found her special niche – creating vintage-inspired Putz houses, made from heavy chipboard, covered in German glass glitter, and embellished with her handmade miniatures and sisal bottlebrush trees.
As a child Elizabeth was attracted to the small paper houses found in the five-and-dime stores at Christmas. Very inexpensive and made mostly in Japan, they faded in popularity as years went by until a resurgence of a newer, larger version of the houses about 10 to 12 years ago. She ordered one, but when she received it she found that it was very poorly made; parts of it were broken, and it was not as pretty as the photo. Disappointed, she sent it back, thinking she could do better herself, and so she did. After successfully making one, she became obsessed, researching and studying examples, and accomplishing her own through trial and error. “That’s how I learn,” she said. She also buys the bottlebrush trees to dye, but even has made those from scratch.
Her Bakery Putz is a delightful creation, full of color and goodies. “I love to do bakeries!” she exclaimed. “My grandfather started our town bakery over a century ago, and my mother was the decorator for many decades. It’s still in the family, with my cousin’s son, so bakeries are a love. My favorite miniatures to make are sweets.” The Bakery Putz  is made of heavyweight chipboard, cardboard, paint, German glass glitter, and polymer clay for the miniatures. She makes her own patterns, hand-drafting and cutting each one. Most houses have about 30 pieces just for the bases and houses, and it takes about 8 to 20 hours for one house. The shops are even more intensive in effort and time because of all the items in the display windows.
As a career she has been an accomplished professional seamstress, designing and making couture-quality bridal gowns and millinery, and even custom figure-skating competition dresses. Now semi-retired, she still has a small shop in which she does alterations. A manageable work routine allows her time for drawing designs for her houses and miniatures while she works. “ It’s often difficult to combine home life and making my houses and minis – it’s easy to get pulled in all directions. That’s why late nights are usually my best creative times to design.” 
Elizabeth cites the source of her inspiration as mostly coming from fond memories she has of growing up, of being, as she said, “the small child looking over the counter of the toy department in the two local small dime stores. I can still hear the creak in the old wood floors as I walked on them, and being so excited to visually take in all the little toys and sparkly Christmas trims. The nostalgia that comes with that memory is still my inspiration. That was my eye-candy as a youth. All the seasons bring new designs and ideas for me to try. When customers tell me they feel like they want to walk right into one of my houses or shops, I feel truly appreciated. I think the miniatures bring much joy. I get lost in them myself working on designs. They just make you happy.” 
She has been drafting and patterning since she was a child. Her dad showed her how to draft, and she took some courses as well. She taught herself pattern drafting, using that skill since she was 10. “I can make almost anything. I sewed my first doll clothes pattern at age 5. Whether it’s carpentry, fabric, home improvements, tile, baking miniatures or whatever, I’m a maker.”
“I am so excited about the future of miniatures,” she continued. “There are such marvelous artists in this field. The imaginative items and venues they come up with are so amazing to me. I want to do more and more detailed houses, shops and scenes. I love incorporating my miniatures with the nostalgic quality of times past. I have so many ideas always spinning in my head trying to get out through my fingers. I wish I could make my fingers smaller sometimes, or just shrink myself so that I could walk inside the houses I make.”
Since she was young, Elizabeth’s favorite times to create are the wee hours between 10 pm and 2 am. She finds those hours magical, describing the feeling as “glittering at midnight”, so she adopted that phrase as her business name. “All the cares of the day are past,” she explained, “and it’s the time when I can focus. When I was young I used to stay up late on weekends and sew in those quiet hours, when I could concentrate without interruption until my mother would stand in my doorway telling me to go to bed. Almost the same thing is true now. I recently was happily working away one night late, and my older kitty started circling through my studio, trying to get me to go to bed just like my mom used to do. It has become a nightly thing now.”

Contact Information:
Name: Elizabeth Hjort
Business Name: Glitter at Midnight
Address: 909 Wisconsin St. - Hibbing MN 55746
Telephone: (218) 969-0182
Email: fossilonice@hotmail.com
Website: Etsy shop glitteratmidnight
Instagram: Instagram:msglitter65