Do you remember how fascinated you were, as a child, about building houses or blocks with toy bricks and Lego? Personally, I enjoyed this so much that I was even using my playing cards to build small houses for my dolls.
As we grow and become more handy,
wise and skillful, we can refine this passion for building houses. Around the world, there are thousands of people who share a passion for building model houses that are basically some miniature houses very similar to the real ones.
Building this kind of houses is a sub-activity of the constructions and architecture fields. Many constructor engineers and architects have the ability and know-how of creating houses at smaller level, but they prefer to outsource it to people who specialized in this field or simply started doing it as a hobby and then ended up by making a living out of it. And there are people who simply stick to building small-sized houses during free time because they enjoy it a lot and find it a very fulfilling activity.
In either case, the process is very pleasant because it involves creativity and perseverance to reach mastership. All you need when starting your journey through building model houses (a journey that for most people lasts a lifetime) is, besides patience and imagination, the material your house will be made of, plus basic cutting, measuring and sticking tools like knives, scissors, paper-cutters, scales and glue. The tools you'll need can usually be found in hobby supplies stores, being available most frequently for 1:16 or 1:8 scales.
To come to create a masterpiece, you have to go through several stages. The first step is to understand the house's blueprint. Then, you have to begin by creating the floor, then, separately, the parts of the house and finally it comes the assemblage.
The chosen material is very important. For beginners, it is recommended that they start with using paper and once they become more skillful, cardboard, to build their model houses. The main advantage of paper and cardboard is the relatively low costs, while their disadvantage is their poor resistance to pressure or rough handling. Beginners can also go for a kit comprising all the items needed to start building. In this case, all they need to do is put together the pieces, according to the blueprint provided. Using a kit is limitative in terms of creativity, but it can be helpful until getting a basic understanding of how things should be done.
Students and people from the branch prefer to use foam as it is easy to handle and can create impressive effects, while wood is a material that becomes suitable when we are already pretty experienced in building model houses. It can be used as craft sticks but also as rough wood, which involves a high degree of skillfulness to handle and turn it into a small piece of art.
When we come to master the art of building model houses, we can also go for special houses styles like Japanese houses that are mainly made of wood, Victorian, Tudor or Georgian houses. They require a lot of imagination and work, but the result is equally satisfying. Along with skillfulness will come the desire to start creating the house's surrounding area including trees, roads, yard, rivers and even focus on decorating the interior of the house. At a proficiency level, we will want and even go for building entire model villages, towns, farms or whatever our imagination and passion lead us to.
