ABOUT
Shelley Armstrong been an artist and designer her entire life. From Ireland originally, where she had her own small graphic design agency, she then moved to the US and began her corporate career as a UX designer in games and software.
She has always maintained creative outlets that feed her soul such as sketching, painting in both oil and water color, jewelry design and now making miniatures
Shelley lived in Seattle WA for many years before moving to central Florida, where she lived for 10 years with her husband on 5 acres with horses, dogs, a barn cat and chickens.
She recently moved to a small town outside of Merida in the beautiful Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. She is loving her new hacienda life with her husband, horses and dogs, enjoying local culture and exploring the mayan ruins that surround her
Traveling as often as possible, Shelley is inspired by the world around her and a huge fan of architecture.
Much of her inspiration for the first dollhouse she made “La Maison Tordue” which means the crooked house LOL, came from trips to Russia and France.
At the onset of the pandemic, when travel was no longer an option, she began planning a Parisian Haussman dollhouse to keep her somewhat sane
Without much of a plan she dove in headfirst and and learned a lot through trial and error and had a lot of fun along the way.
Amazingly enough she always loved making miniatures as a child from cardboard boxes, scrap paper, plasticine and clay but never had her own dollhouse. Every visit to Chicago included a trip to the Art Institute to see the Chagall windows and the Thorne Miniatures. Perhaps unsurprising that she turned to this again as an adult. This first dollhouse took about 14 months to build and was really a labor of love. Family and friends followed her progress on Facebook and an old friend and colleague interviewed her for his online publication Great Love Sound Please check it out.
Despite thinking she would never build another, she discovered that this habit was not one she wanted to break. She quickly missed it so much, that she started another project. An Art Nouveau house which is one of her favorite periods. This may be the beginning of a lifelong obsession 🙂