(Rebecca Reckin – (Hic Sunt Dracones – Here be Dragons)    DHM84    9/17/21
A House with a Dragon

by Pam North

As a child Rebecca Reckin used to make things for her  dolls; her mother collected dolls and loved crafts so it was natural. It wasn’t until about 2014 that Rebecca discovered miniatures. She and her teenaged daughter bought a couple of 1:24 scale kits online, and from there, despite no formal training in making miniatures, she was hooked. Her daughter had been making polymer clay food for her dolls since she was about 10. “Having home-educated for most of my kid’s schooling, we had a lot of time for creative fun and learning,” Rebecca reminisced.
Working in miniature has its difficulties where she lives. “While we have a few online dollhouse/miniature shops here in New Zealand, mostly I order from overseas. Especially given the last year, this has been hugely problematic. I’ve had to be very patient, one time waiting on an order from Russia which took 202 days to get here! This is why I mostly make things rather than purchase ready-made items.”
She is not likely to abandon her hobby, however. “What I love most about miniatures are two things: First, I love the challenge of making something tiny based on a full-size item. Second, I love being able to build things you can’t find in real life – things from your imagination like dragons!”
Inspiration is easy for her. “It’s everywhere, literally! From TV programs like Outlander, to my imagination, to looking at other cultures or within my own family.”
Her recent ambitious project was her Hic Sunt Dracones - Here Be Dragons, done in 1:12 scale. It was her first-time entry for a Creatin’ Contest (held by HBS/miniatures.com), and she was the Grand Prize Winner for 2020. “Each year HBS puts out a kit especially for the contest,” she explained. “I had been wanting to work on a fantasy project, and almost immediately upon seeing the kit, the thought of having a derelict cottage and a dragon came to mind.”
She used almost the whole Creatin’ Contest kit, which was comprised of MDF flooring, a small mezzanine, two walls, two windows and a door. “I didn’t use one of the windows or the steps. Almost everything else I made. The gorgeous birdcage I bought from Lidi Stroud of Basketcase Miniatures (Etsy). I made the wee bones in the bottom! I used a couple of purchased accessories, and the chair was a kit. Pretty much everything else I made.”
Other materials used to make the piece were: rigid foam board, paperclay, Sculptamold, resin, polymer clay, wood, card, and wire. Many of the techniques to build it she learned hands-on as she went. “I used Rik Pierce’s Techniques book for the walls and roofing,” she shared. The hardest part about making the miniature was that she had to pull out the entire stream and the surrounding rocks twice and completely re-do them before getting the resin right, an effort that took her a month. “Hic Sunt Dracones didn’t turn out completely as I envisioned; originally I wasn’t going to have a stream at all!”
Her favorite parts about the piece were the internal roof, the doorway, and the broken wall/window, but the element that was the most fun to create was definitely the dragon. “As New Zealand was in a full lockdown at the time, I was able to sit down with my daughter and her partner and we all made dragons. James, my daughter’s partner, loves dragons so that was really fun. The first dragon took me about 24 hours to make but was a little small for the area. The second dragon took about 20 hours.  I still haven’t perfected the wings so I am considering making another.”
She doesn’t plan to sell Hic Sunt Dracones, but rather display it in her home. She has had work in a local exhibition before, so the piece may have a similar future.
While she made the piece especially for the Creatin’ Contest, it was a theme she had wanted to explore for some time. “There were so many challenges in this project, and so many techniques that I hadn’t used before. Certainly I loved making everything look so old and worn, whereas in the past more often than not I’ve made everything new and shiny!”
She is optimistic about the future of miniatures, saying, “I think it will grow as more and more people become aware of this art/craft form, and as it becomes more readily available to people, I’m certain that this hobby will expand.”
Rebecca already has her next project in mind, as she will be entering the Creatin’ Contest 2021. She plans to complete a Finnish house she has been building first. “I think I also want to do smaller pieces more often to give myself the opportunity to continue to learn and grow without continually working on projects that take months and months to complete,” she said.