The journey to Bitty House Miniatures wasn't a direct one. In fact, it would have been easy for life to take a slightly different turn and it never have been created at all. So how did we get here?
As a young girl I loved dolls, especially Barbie dolls. She was always so cool and pretty, I wanted to BE her. I had a large collection of dolls & clothes, and had even worked with my mom to create my first ever Barbie diorama. It was a piece of plywood with different types of contact paper for the floors and a plush white piece of fur that served as the bedrooms deep pile carpeting. My friends and I spent hundreds (maybe thousands?) of hours playing with that setup. As I got older, I remember asking for Barbie's for my 12th birthday but also feeling a bit embarrassed to let the kids at school know that I was still playing with them. Then shortly after I entered middle school and dropped her like a hot potato. She was too baby-ish and I was too cool to keep playing with dolls.
Once in college for engineering, I met Greg while home for winter break. We hit it off immediately. He's an artist & musician with strong opinions and an innate eye for what looks good. I'm more laid back but also analytical and extremely driven. They say opposites attract, right? It somehow works and we are perfect partners for each other. I'm not saying every day is perfect and most projects include some sort of argument over how best to do things. But in the end, we've learned how to hear each others input, combine it and end up with a better result than either of us would have gotten on our own.
Fast forward a few years and I'm watching the 'Tiny Shoulders' documentary. Wait - Barbie now comes in curvy shapes?? Oh she is COOL again. I'll take one curvy scientist please. She stands on my office shelf and keeps me company while I quit my engineering job and start our own business making custom cabinets out of our garage. That hums along for a few years until the pandemic hit. Then we find ourselves locked down without an active project and with a whole lot of small scrap pieces. The spark of inspiration comes from a woodworking catalog, highlighting miniature work. Hmmm, that looks like fun. Let's give it a shot! It turns out to be an amazing creative outlet for both of us, that is the perfect marriage of my analytical and Greg's artistic mind. Along the way we've learned a lot about scale, assembling small size things in large batches and running an online business. And that work doesn't have to be so serious!
So when we relocated from Houston to a small town in Vermont in 2022, it seemed like the perfect time to wind down the cabinetry business and grow Bitty House from a side hustle to our full time venture. The journey to get here might have been a winding one but we are so very excited to see where it takes us next!
~Lorianna