Debra Hornung Zachrich – The Pumpkin Cottage
Life in a Pumpkin
by Pam North

Rural Ohio is home for Debra Hornung Zachrich, along with her husband and their two Cairn terriers. “It’s wonderfully peaceful here,” she said, “ and a great place for letting the ideas flow from mind to  fingers.” Debra creates a little of everything. “I scratch-build my own furniture designs, and enjoy making different foods from polymer clay. I think what I truly love, though, is making dolls and seeing them come alive in my hands, and adding them to my scenes.”
She became interested in miniatures in 1990 when on a vacation; she saw a beautiful dollhouse in a store, with many things to buy for it. Raising two sons in a small house did not lend itself to dollhouses then, so it was 23 years before she could indulge what soon would become a passion. “Finally, I had the room for a dollhouse, and bought a small kit, the RGT Beachside Bungalow. Since then, I’ve been like a sponge, soaking in all I can learn about different techniques.” When asked what she loves about miniatures, she replied, “The total freedom to create anything I want. Whether it’s a simple scene or a highly detailed one, the choice is totally up to me.  I love the challenge of making what I create look realistic.”
Debra had no formal training in the miniature field, but she had crafted things her whole life, Her father was a mechanic, and her grandfather was a carpenter, so she learned about basic construction and workmanship from both of them. She is mainly self-taught through books and videos.
One of her recent pieces is  The Pumpkin Cottage, also known as The Summer Cottage of Mrs. Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater. "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her; he put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her, very well.” That familiar nursery rhyme, paired with a Halloween scene of skeletons in a pumpkin shell she had seen, comprised the initial inspiration for her project, but she opted out of Halloween, substituting instead an autumn theme she could display for an entire season. “That rhyme kept going ‘round and ‘round in the back of my mind,” Debra reminisced. “Making something in the fantasy realm was a little bit of a stretch for me; I tend to make things more realistic. It was a good chance to try out some new techniques.”
Debra started with a round base from the gardening department, and an end-of-season carve-able foam pumpkin from the hobby store. Some Chrysnbon kits were implemented with some modifications, along with a trunk kit, and a miniature hutch from Michael’s. She made the pumpkin rug using needle punch. Some of the items on the hutch, and the cats, were either purchases or items she had on hand, but one required more effort. “The pumpkin teapot was the hardest to get; I had to sweet-talk a friend out of it!” Other materials were: coffee stir-sticks, DAS air-dry clay, artificial flowers, Heki grass, DMC floss for the rug, FIMO, and the rest of the items mostly were odds-and-ends left over from other projects. Under the flooring, which was made of coffee stir-sticks, matboard, and foamcore, is the battery and wiring for the LED lights - two sconces, the lamp, and the coal stove. “I used the ‘pico’ size LED for the Chrysnbon lamp, which conveniently had a hole running right up through the center of the lamp base. I made a little notch in the base for the wire to run out the back, then down behind the table, and through the floor. The coal stove was done the same way,with a larger, orange LED, but I hid the wiring down behind one leg of the stove. The switch for the lights is hidden among the foundation rocks for the pumpkin. The inside walls are ‘plastered’ with air-dry clay, which also conceals the wiring for the LED sconce near the front, and in the loft.”
Once the wiring and floor were done, and the walls plastered and painted, the project went very quickly. Debra made the front removable. The door, left over from a dollhouse, was given an etched look by cutting vinyl and adhering it to the ‘window’. The flowers were sprigs purchased from the craft store and trimmed. The ivy around the entry was added with paper leaves and crochet cotton stems.
“Constructing the front door entry was the most difficult, as it required a lot of trial and error to get it to fit. The fun part was wiring LED lighting into the Chrysnbon stove and lamp.” Outside, a mama cat has a batch of new kittens underneath the steps. “I like it when someone looks at my miniatures and sees something that they didn’t expect. Their reaction is priceless!”
Debra’s inspiration comes from memorable things she sees and hears. She cites one major difficulty with working in miniature: “Finding how-to techniques has been a chore at times, especially those in miniature. Many times, learning a new method or style is a trial-and-error process, simply because there is no video or book available from which to learn. I wish more skilled artisans would consider doing them, as there are many of us who can’t attend or afford a workshop they put on.”
As for the future of miniatures, she is optimistic. “I think there’s great hope for miniatures in the future if we just reach the younger people, and find out what they want to create. It may be something quite different from the dollhouses and room boxes we are familiar with, but the urge to create something lies within each person, and we just need to nurture it.”
Next for her is a bakery/confectioner shop, built into a small cabinet. “There was one in a nearby town when I was growing up, and I want to create something similar.” She also is continuing to make dolls.
Contact information:
Email:  zachrch@metalink.net
Phone:  (419) 439-3209
Address:  17738 County Road C1, New Bavaria, OH 43548   USA