(Nancy Wilder Schell)

Room Box Renderings

by Pam North

Collectors of miniatures often are not dollhouse-oriented, preferring instead to showcase their little treasures in individual settings. Room boxes perfectly suit this preference, lending themselves to individual representations of periods in history, different styles of furniture and accessories, miniature shops, and other such frozen moments in time.
Obtaining vacant but decorated room boxes can be a bit of a treasure hunt, however, so enter Nancy Wilder Schell, whose focus is handmade, one-of-a-kind miniature room boxes in 1:12 scale, perfect backdrops to those miniature collections that haven’t yet found a home.
Nancy always has loved miniatures, and has been building her own dollhouses and room boxes and collecting miniatures for over 25 years. Underlying this endeavor is her intense love of interior design, leading her to remark, “I'd go broke indulging that passion, and my husband would throw me out if I always was redecorating our house, so building room boxes lets me be an interior designer on a mini-scale! They are perfect for highlighting a special miniature piece that would tend to get lost if displayed in a dollhouse. Plus, it's easier to find places to display a room box. I enjoy building them so much that I started selling them thru eBay and Etsy.”
Nancy’s room boxes are each unique and handmade, often using resin moldings, fireplaces, and other objects that she hand-casts, and wallpapers that she designs herself. She also often includes electric chandeliers or fireplace embers to add an atmosphere of warmth and coziness. Although she buys wholesale through Houseworks, Inc. to obtain her flooring and electric lights, the pieces she creates reflect her own creativity and originality.
The room boxes themselves usually are made of ¼ -inch MDF (medium density fiberboard), a material that doesn't warp and is lighter weight for shipping. The interiors of the room boxes include real wood floors, wood baseboards, crown moldings, resin or detail moldings, wallpaper (sometimes 3 or 4 different papers in the same room box), electric lights, and fireplaces.
She has mastered the methods and tools needed to achieve her renderings. “I couldn't live without my compound miter saw, jigsaw, and electric drill, all tools I used to be afraid to even try to use!”
Her inspiration for a room box gels while she is building each one. If she has a resin molding she has just cast, or a specific wallpaper she wants to use, these often are the elements that trigger her inventiveness. Even actual, life-size rooms pictured in magazines sometimes become the spark to galvanize the creation of a room box. “I get ideas based on a piece of furniture I see, or sometimes an concept just comes to me in my sleep. I keep a notebook by my bed, and will wake up and sketch out a design! ”
Nancy claims to have no unusual method for creating any of her pieces, mostly just simply tapping into her own imagination. The aspects she finds most difficult to deal with tend to be the time some of the more labor-intensive boxes take to build, and the fact that she is a bit of a perfectionist, which sometimes drives her to re-wallpaper a room box 2 or 3 times to get it exactly as she envisions it. “It has to look just right before I will list it on eBay or Etsy to sell. I do love the entire cycle of starting with bare wood and having a complete, beautiful room when I'm done. Every room box is unique, and I have an idea in my head of how I want it to look. Usually, it turns out like I envisioned, but every once in a while it ends up being completely different than what I thought it would be when I started. I love the entire process!” Although most of her room boxes are one-of-a-kind, she will consider building a duplicate room box as a special order.
She sells all of her room boxes through her eBay and Etsy sites (found by entering minithings4you in the search bar on these sites), usually listing her eBay room boxes through the auction process to let bidders decide how much they feel the room box is worth. “I try to start my room boxes at a reasonable price, usually about $150 and up, depending on how many ‘goodies’ are included in the box, like lighting and fireplaces.”
Nancy’s creativity knows no bounds, motivating her to look ahead to trying new ideas. “I never know what I'll come up with!” she remarked. “A project I really want to build, but have been putting off because it's so labor-intensive, is a kitchen room box complete with cabinets. I envision it being a modern farm house kitchen. I'd also like to incorporate mirrored walls into a room box, and I'm considering building some 1:24 scale room boxes as well. I'm only limited by time!”

Contact information:
Name: Nancy Wilder Schell
Business Name: Mini Memories Dollhouse Shop/minithings4you on eBay
Email: mini.memories.dollhouse@gmail.com, tracks1217@tumwater.net
Phone: (509) 888-2315 (Do not post in article)
Address: 6950 Pioneer Drive, Cashmere, WA 98815
Website: eBay user: minithings4you Ebay Store: Mini Memories Dollhouse Shop
For the article, please only post the above email address and my eBay user ID and eBay store name for how to contact me.