Instagram identities: Julie Lamb, aka Jalminiatures
Moi Ali finds out about an Instagrammer from ‘down under’.
Find out about more about an Instagram sensation, Jalminiatures
Creative miniaturist Julie Lamb is based in Scarborough. That got me excited, as when I think of Scarborough, I have in mind the lovely seaside town in North Yorkshire. Living in the north myself (Scotland, that is) I wondered if I might visit Julie and chat about all things small. Then the penny dropped. Yes, Julie is from Scarborough, with its sandy coastline and beautiful sea, but her Scarborough can be found in a coastal residential suburb north of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. Much as I’d love to visit, we had to find a different way to chat, so email it was!
Julie explained to me how she came to enter the wonderful world of miniatures:
“My daughter asked me to find a dolls house for my granddaughter, who was just two at the time, and to do it up for her to play with. I’d never done one before, as when my girls were little we just somehow didn’t get to do one, so it was a whole new world to me.”
A chance find changed all that, as Julie explained: “I was driving my dogs to the dog park and spotted a whole pile of junk items on the footpath waiting for collection. I thought I could see a miniature roof of some kind, so I pulled over and rummaged through the pile. I pulled out what looked to me like a little shop. I brought it home and left it on the veranda while I made a cuppa, then I sat down beside it trying to figure out
what it actually was! It turned out to be a Victorian-style window-fronted shop with a teddy bear emblem stuck on the front gable. It was regrettably in several pieces.”
Not many of us are lucky enough to find a dolls house thrown out with the rubbish, albeit one in a state of disrepair! Julie told me about her lucky find: “I was fascinated as I’d never seen anything like it. We’d only moved to the city four years before. I guess being a country girl means you don’t get things like miniature clubs or dolls house fairs. Anyway, I slowly worked out how it should look, even though weather boards were broken and it came in four broken pieces. I managed to put it back together, then I started making items to go inside it.”
Although Julie was a total novice, she researched miniatures online and built up her knowledge of the subject. “Then I attended my first miniature show here in Brisbane and that was that. Excitement took over and I’ve been making and designing miniature scenes ever since. It’s been four years now and there’s no stopping me!”
After transforming the little shop she found, and handmaking a lot of items to go inside it, her granddaughter didn’t get near it! Having put so much work into it, Julie eventually sold it two years later. She did, however, buy another dolls house to renovate especially for her now granddaughters
(plural) to play with.
She then completed her first scratch build, a little fisherman’s shack. This project taught her how to plan a house, including how to fit it together and how to incorporate lighting. “That was a learning curve,” she told me. “I made 90 per cent of the items in it, to include fishing overalls and a tiny fishing pole. I made my first bird for that shack. Every Australian expects to see a white cockatoo as a pet when they travel into the outback! I just love using my hands and had never sculpted until minis came into my life. Since I started making miniature birds, I’ve had so many requests for all types and I’ve loved making each and every one. I’ve made all sorts of birds... blue, white and black peacocks, chickens and roosters, New York pigeons and doves, ibis, known as bin chickens in Australia, white cockatoos and a galah, lovebirds, yellow canaries and baby blackbirds. Each bird I’ve made has been a challenge, yet once I ‘find’ the bird in the clay, it simply comes to life. A friend calls me the bird lady!”
Like many of us, Julie had a Covid project. “During lockdown I scratch-built a barn-type house. Luckily, I had some materials to hand when we entered lockdown, and I knew I
could source some paperbark from the trees down by the waterfront for my project.”
I asked Julie how she gained the skills necessary to make such lovely miniatures: “By being a full-time parent and DIY’er!” she explained. “That’s how I gained my skills. In the full-scale world, if I wanted something changed or fixed, I had to do it myself as my husband worked away. In my 1:1 life
I’ve nailed down timber floorboards, laid slate flooring, grouted, plastered walls, tiled kitchen walls, hung wallpaper, built lead lights for windows... I guess you could say I am a jack of all trades! Now I just do the same in miniature, the only difference being that the tools are smaller and I use slightly different techniques.”
I asked Julie about the design process. She told me: “My first thought always when I create a design is, ‘how can I make that?’ I really enjoy figuring out how to get the style I’m after. Sometimes I repurpose items, other times I buy little decor items like glasses, plates and vases to create just the right scene.”
Aside from sourcing materials from the waterfront, Julie has picked up bargains at the Brisbane fair, and she buys building supplies and odds and ends from her local hardware shop. “For miniature hardware,” she told me, “I have purchased a couple of times from miniature shops online. For items I really don’t have the skill to make, I have done some wonderful swaps with the miniature community on Instagram. There are some really talented artisans in the online community. I try to avoid 3D printed items, although sometimes they are necessary to get the style I’m looking for. I don’t own a 3D printer or laser cutter, although I am considering the benefit of getting a laser cutter.”
Julie continued: “My family love that I’ve found my creative outlet as it’s made me happy to make others happy and I’m so supported by the miniature community online; I’ve made many new friends that love this hobby just as much as I do. I am so thankful that my roadside find came into my life and sparked my interest in miniatures and the creativity I didn’t know I had. Later, I took photos of the rebuilt little shop and dropped them with a ‘thank you’ card into the mailbox of the house where I found the abandoned and broken model. I will always be so grateful and I thought they deserved a thank you and to see what I’d done with their little shop.”