By Lauren Jones
Gilroy – A beautiful dollhouse decorates the stairway of Roslyn
Jacobs’ home. The Gilroy resident has been building dollhouses for
the past five years.
By Lauren Jones
Gilroy – A beautiful dollhouse decorates the stairway of Roslyn Jacobs’ home. The Gilroy resident has been building dollhouses for the past five years.
A native of England, Jacobs, and her family of five, which include sons, Peter, 19, Alex, 16, and Philip, 14 relocated to Gilroy after her husband, Andrew’s, job was moved to California.
“We lived in a rural area of Swindon, England,” Jacobs said in her lilting English accent. “I was used to small towns and that was what attracted us to Gilroy. The only big difference is driving on the other side of the road.”
Once her family was relocated, Jacobs – who works as a receptionist at a local dentist office, which manages to keep her busy – began to create crafts at home. She found that building dollhouses was an interesting hobby that wasn’t popular in England.
“I had never heard of some of the crafts that people do here,” she said. “I heard of scrap booking and I was like what is that?”
One day when passing by a hobby shop in Gilroy, Jacobs began looking at dollhouses. She instantly became interested and decided she wanted to learn how to build her own. So she began taking classes and became a member of a group called The Miniature Scene.
“It’s a group of people from all over America,” she said. “We chat online and exchange ideas.”
Jacobs not only puts the houses together, but then she paints them and assembles some of the furniture.
Now she wants to get into even more detail.
“I want to learn how to make people,” she said.
Her houses are built from the ground up, and each one takes a few months to complete. Starting with flat pieces of wood, she cuts and glues together each section until the desired look of the house is accomplished. Then she paints the house and adds any details. Each shingle on the roof is hand done and any brickwork is painted.
“I have doll house days where I’ll work on a project,” Jacobs said. “It can be very time consuming, but my family is very encouraging and appreciates what I do.”
Now Jacobs and her friends are planning something even more ambitious: a street scene. Jacobs has chosen to create an English tea shop for the scene that she said will be about 3-feet by 4-feet and figures that project should take about six months to complete.
She has completed the one house and wants to take more classes before she begins building in earnest.
Although Jacobs enjoys the projects, she does admit that it can be expensive.
“You really can get so wrapped up in it that it can be costly,” she said. “You can spend as little or as much as you want. I love it because you can get as creative as you want though. You really can create the house of your dreams.”
One of the benefits she’s found in her new hobby is the number of friends she’s made.
“I hope people in Gilroy will read this and want to contact me,” she said. “I’d love to start a club in Gilroy for people that enjoy building dollhouses.”
Later on she plans to possibly sell some of her work, but for right now she enjoys letting only her family and friends admire her work.
“I’m still pretty new to it but someday I’d like to show my work.”
