(Kitty Wiggett - Hexen House)

Miniatures Spooky and Spectacular

by Pam North

When COVID hit Australia, much of the country went into a sustained lockdown. Melbourne endured almost an entire year of hard, back-to-back restrictions, where it was illegal to leave one’s home for over an hour for any but a few very specific reasons.

Kitty Wiggett used the lockdown experience to her advantage when she got the idea for her ongoing 1:12 scale miniature piece, Hexen House. She had spent quite a bit of time on TikTok, and discovered that old castoff dollhouses were being transformed by creative artists into fantastic themed art pieces. Inspired, she searched for and found a kit house that would work for her developing desire to create something similar. “It wasn’t much to look at, but it had decent bones and seemed like a good place to start,” she explained. “The more I looked into the world of ‘spooky’ miniatures, the more obsessed I became! I had never even considered that there were people out there turning their love for all things ghostly into miniature works of art. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but instead of that being a hindrance, this experimental approach appealed to my spontaneous nature. There were no rules!”

Kitty had been a digital producer for some of Australia’s most well-known magazine titles; then became a stay-at-home mum for her now 8-year-old son after he was born. Home alone with a small child, and coping with a raging pandemic, she had begun to feel the isolation. “I desperately needed some kind of hobby or pastime in order to retain my sanity. As I am a fairly spooky person by nature, the idea of a dollhouse that embraced that aesthetic was hugely appealing. I always have loved and been quite good at art, but didn’t pursue it as a career. Miniatures are the perfect marriage of creativity and absolute lawlessness. There is no ‘right way’ to do a dollhouse, as it’s simply an extension of self.”

Her family recently have relocated from Melbourne to Canberra, Australia’s capital city, and Kitty now is working as a miniaturist pretty much full-time from her home studio there, which has been a major change for her. “The thing I love most about miniatures is the unmitigated creative freedom that comes with making them,” she commented. “There are so many ways to create, and so many things to miniaturize; the only limit is one’s imagination. Canberra has a thriving community of artists, and is home to a wonderful outdoor landscaped miniature Tudor village named Cockington Green, with which I would love to get involved in the future.”

The vast majority of everything in her Hexen House is handmade by Kitty. While she occasionally uses store-bought furniture, she always transforms it almost beyond recognition. The house itself is an older Australian-made kit that she gutted completely, adding new floorboards, wall treatments, paneling, fireplaces, and more. It has been a constant work in progress, going through several versions before reaching its current (and she says still evolving) state.

The materials she employs in her creation process are numerous and diverse. Many of her 1:12 scale items are made from using a 3D printer. She uses the Anycubic Photon Mono SE, which uses resin to print instead of filament. She pointed out that there are increasing numbers of creators using 3D printing in their work. Kitty’s creation style of 3D resin printing has a massive learning curve attached to it, resulting in many failed prints in her pursuit of perfection. “I’ve lost count of the times I’ve had to
 discard something I’ve spent hours on, just because I accidentally snapped a piece off when removing 
the supports. There is a huge amount of work involved in printing: editing or creating the STL file, adding the supports in 3D slicing software, overseeing the printing process, cleaning and curing the print, sanding it and ensuring it has no imperfections. All that comes before sitting down to paint and add other elements.”

There are many tools that make life easier for a miniaturist, but by far the most valuable to her is the 3D resin printer. “I know this may annoy the purists, but the level of detail and accuracy that can be achieved with this technology is revolutionary. For the first time, very fine miniatures are within reach for those of us without unlimited money. The other tool that is very important is my cordless Dremel, which has reduced my work time significantly, not to mention saved my fingers from endless sanding.”

Kitty is talented at finding ways to use materials in an unexpected manner. “I found that fingernail decals make fantastic decorations for miniatures,” she shared. “They come in all kinds of designs, but they offer a type of detail that is almost impossible to replicate by hand unless one is a master miniaturist.” For her Hexen House she fashioned potion bottles from beads and jewelry findings; magical scrolls from paper printables wrapped around wooden skewers; books from cardboard, paper, and glue; window panes from clear UV resin; natural history specimens from beheaded Schleich toy animals; hearths from air-dry clay. The final and most time-consuming part of the process is the intricate painting, which she accomplishes with her vast array of paints, pigments, pastes, and washes, and for some items even real gold in liquid or leaf form; it’s all those detailed touches that give her miniature pieces that abandoned, desolate feel. “My knowledge of 3D printing beforehand was absolutely zero, and I had never painted anything that wasn't on a canvas,” she admitted. “I had no idea how to do any of it, from laying and staining wooden floorboards, even making little potion bottles, let alone enough of them to fill an entire room full of apothecary shelves. So this has been a major learning experience for me.”

Some of the things she particularly loved creating for Hexen House are the hyperrealistic human and animal skulls and bones. “I get a huge kick out of making them as real-looking as possible - so much so that Instagram deleted my original account because it believed I had posted photos of actual human remains! I mean, is there any higher praise than fooling an entire department of content moderators?” she joked.

One of her favorite techniques for the walls of Hexen House was to use a basic drywall compound, specifically an Australian brand called Spakfilla, which has a slightly grainy paste-like consistency, and comes in a little tub. Applied to the interior walls with a cooking spatula (like frosting a cake), it creates what looks like wattle and daub, a centuries-old composite building method in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle was daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung, and straw. Once dry, the Spakfilla can either be sanded flat to look like modern plaster, or left with the rough spatula texture to mimic a medieval appearance. Clever application of painting techniques give the walls an aged, slightly neglected look. Kitty also sometimes carves symbols into the ‘plaster’ to add to the witchy ambience of the house, and occasionally she experiments with adding real vine and root material, as if nature was reclaiming the house. Where possible, she also likes to use real stone, wood, and slate. “It makes an enormous difference to the believability of your work,” she explained,”although it comes with a hefty price tag.”

Her favorite part of Hexen House is the way it gives all her weird and spooky miniatures a place to be showcased. “On any given day, this dollhouse is like the set of a movie. One of the greatest joys is simply moving things around, creating wonderful, whimsical, and somewhat threatening spaces for other people to enjoy via social media. I really have enjoyed immersing myself in the idea of a folkloric house, full of strange and creepy things slowly being reclaimed by nature.”

Her Hexen House has changed its skin more times than she can count. “At first, I was doing simple things like spray painting the whole thing black. Over time, I accumulated new tools and new products that allowed me to do so much more. Let’s not forget that now, two years after I started, it still is not finished. I put an enormous amount of work into aging the exterior - including moss and vines - only to rip it all off, repaint, and start again. I sometimes wonder if a dollhouse is ever truly complete. It is unique in its capacity to continuously grow and change; unlike other static artwork it may never achieve a solid and continuous state, and that’s okay!”

One of the biggest difficulties involved with working in miniatures for Kitty is where she is located.  “Australia is an isolated nation, without easy or immediate access to many of the resources our American friends enjoy.” she commented. “For example, there are no brick-and-mortar dollhouse shops here. The cost of shipping over something as common in the US as a Greenleaf dollhouse kit is astronomical, so we rarely get the option to source one.”

She sells many of her miniatures on Etsy, at prices ranging from $30AUD to $280AUD, and she also takes some custom orders.

Asked what’s next for her and her creations, she said, “I plan to continue creating the very weird and wonderful! I’d love to do an art gallery installation or a small show at some point. Apart from that, it’s cracking on with the other houses currently inhabiting my work tables!”

Contact information:
Name: Kitty Wiggett
Business name: The Miniature Witch
Email: theminiaturewitch@gmail.com
Phone: 0431 870 661
Address: 60/50 Ellenborough Street, Lyneham ACT 2602
Website: https://theminiaturewitch.etsy.com
Instagram? https://www.instagram.com/the_miniature_witch_