Shelley Armstrong’s La Maison Tordue

Inch by inch, room by room — the little house which Shelley built is extraordinary in every detail

Shelley Armstrong’s lifelong passion for miniatures and travel was the perfect antidote to the anxiety and isolation of 2020.

For the first 14 months of the 2020-2021 global COVID-19 pandemic, I tagged along on Facebook as Shelley shared behind-the-scenes shots of miniature furniture making and upholstering, room painting, decorating, and lighting.

She created a stunning four story Victorian style Parisian home room by room, inch by inch. Her attention to detail is off the charts.

I enjoyed catching up with Shelley and learning more about her process, her creative solutions and challenges, what's next for her, and what she listens to in the studio.

You’ve recently completed your Parisian doll house, adding hundreds of lights as the final touch. It’s stunning! This was very much a COVID project, correct?

It is absolutely my pandemic obsession. It was just one of those things when all of this happened, a way to deal with all of the anxiety and general stress. We can't go anywhere; you're afraid you'll get someone sick or someone will get you sick. So I was just looking for things to keep me occupied, my mind and hands. I thought, well, I'll paint or I'll make jewelry, do all the usual things that I would do, but for some reason I think the stress levels of the pandemic were just different and I didn't feel very creative. I didn't feel like I could just sit in front of a canvas and do something. I tried a few times and just sort of lost interest. I think it was just the stress. I just couldn't get into it, couldn't get into the zone. I was doing jigsaw puzzles and different things to try and keep me from going totally crazy. Additionally, we had literally just moved my father and his third wife into our house, from Vegas, and it was supposed to be short term. They were going to live with us for a couple months until they got settled, and then they were going to find a place to live and move out. Well, the pandemic hit and that turned into eight months.

Had you done anything like this before?

I'd always loved miniatures when I was a kid growing up in Ireland. I used to take books out of the library to read about how to make all these fancy miniatures and functioning ones, all of that good stuff. But I never had a doll house growing up. We had a smaller house, where would we have put that?

They have miniature kits on Amazon, and since the other ideas I had weren’t working out, I did a couple of those and what I discovered was that it completely took me away. I wasn't thinking about the pandemic. I wasn't thinking about my house full of relatives and all of the other stressors. When I started making the mini things it was just very soothing and it felt good. I was doing something, there was an end result. I felt accomplishment when it was done, but it also made me forget about everything else while I was working on it. And so I did a couple of those and I was talking to my mom about it and I was joking about what am I going to do with all these stupid little mini scenes that I'm building, and she said I should just build my own. And I said, you know, I probably should.

So that's how it started. Rather than settle for another little kit that’s not really what I want to build, I’d do my own thing. So I just started researching. I went on Pinterest and looked for some doll houses and researched a whole bunch of things. My original plan was to do an Art Deco house. There's a lot of curves with Art Deco, things like curved walls and everything. Ultimately I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to be able to accomplish that.

It struck me that one of the big things I missed during all of this is travel. So I said, you know what? I'm just going to do one of those big palatial Parisian Haussmann houses. I figured that way I can go over the top and not worry about historical accuracy, but just something in the flavor of every time you travel and go to one of those wonderful palaces, and you walk through and you imagine living in the 18th century or something.

About Shelley

With more than 20 years of experience focused on customer experience and UX design in the software space, Shelley has been a relentless creator in multiple mediums outside her corporate role. From painting and sketching, to jewelry design and most recently handcrafting miniatures. Her main loves and inspiration come from her travels and the animals in her life, particularly her horses & dogs. She can be found in the studio attached to her barn, dreaming up the next project.

Catch up with her in a number of places below.

Red Mare Studio

Shelley Armstrong Art Studio

Red Mare Consulting

Tell me about the process of planning and creating something like this.

Most people when they take on a project this large, they plan it out all out, they build the exterior and then they work on the interior. Well, I just didn't have time for that. I also wasn't sure entirely what I was going to do and I didn't know how long the pandemic was going to last, and I wanted to start. I needed to do something now, so I just started building things from the ground up. I call it La Maison Tordue, which means the crooked house, because I don't think there's a single straight line due to me building it room by room, wall by wall, floor by floor, just going up and up. It's definitely not perfectly plumb.

The whole thing just went with me as I went along. I started out on the 2nd floor: I made this fancy bed and it was an inch too tall. But I didn't want to redo the bed because it took a really long time. Well I guess this is gonna have to have a code change—I'm going to increase the ceiling here. And that means in the hallway, too, and that meant I was going to have to have steps into that. So the process was very organic—room by room by room.

And frequently it changed a lot between where I thought I was going with it and where I ended up—happy accidents—I just went with it and it just grew and grew. Over time it became four stories tall. Everything was about problem solving and making changes and figuring things out as you go. It drives my husband and my son mad because they like to have everything planned out. If we're going to do an outdoor project, they want the list of materials, the elevations front, back, center, everything ahead of time and I'm much more... "Here, I'll scribble it down. It's going to kind of look like this. We'll work it out." So I I tend to fly a bit more by the seat of my pants.

It was so fun. I took lots of liberties. None of this is truly historically accurate. The likelihood that this very wealthy woman who owns this house apparently has her own art studio, that's kind of slim to none. I just did the things that I wanted, like making the dress for the Lady of the house, and I did a walk in closet which they totally didn't have, but I wanted to do it and it was fun. She probably has her own dressmaker that lives on the premises because, you know, she wouldn't want to have a dress like anybody else at the fancy parties she goes to, so that's there. There's a maid's room on the other side, and then the star gazing and the telescope is in the center.

Is music part of your studio setup? What do you listen to when you are working?

It's all over the map. My father was a musician so I grew up with music in the house all the time with no real distinction for genre or time period, so my music tastes tend to be fairly all over the map. I love pop and dance and you know basics like that, but I also have some old bluesy, jazzy stuff, a little bit of country on there. I have all sorts of things that just for whatever reason spoke to me and I enjoy them. I have a thing for lyrics, I like to sing along with some of my favorites... much to the chagrin of my son is across the hall from the craft room.

I've got some Nina Simone and I've got some Chris Stapleton, just different things that I come across, something that I don't get tired of. It finds its way onto that playlist and it's about 9 hours long, it just grows and grows. I just hit shuffle and so it's a little bit different every time.  I'm happy to share a shorter version of my studio playlist with you.

I'd love that. Gotta say, I have a thing for Nina Simone and she ends up on just about every playlist I create for people, if it fits the vibe or mix.

All day. I saw Nina Simone in Seattle many years ago. She came to the waterfront maybe 22 or 23 years ago, it was amazing… I love her.

You're so fortunate. I didn't know about that show for some reason, missed it, then heard about it years later. I must have been traveling? I'm heartbroken I missed seeing her.

It was phenomenal. I was very happy to actually have the chance to see her live and the really cool thing was how into it she was. You know some people have said that occasionally she would be a bit detached during a live show, like she didn't want to be there or didn't talk to the crowd or wasn't engaged with them. Not at this show. She was just really into her music and really there for the crowd. She was lost in the music and she was absolutely engaged. She got up and danced at one point, singing and dancing, it was just amazing. I loved it.

Wow. So sorry to miss her.

Are you thinking of doing another house as a future project?

I wasn't going to. I was completely convinced this was going to be a 'one and done'. This has been an obsession for the better part of a year and more. And you know, I don't have time to keep doing this. And where would I put another one? But I started thinking about doing an Art Nouveau one. I've already started gathering some of my research and it's easy because I always loved Art Nouveau. It's one of my favorite periods of art. I love Alphonse Mucha and all that beautiful stuff. That's the birth of graphic design, you know—that time period—posters and advertising. He did everything from making jewelry to designing money, and they put some of his work on stamps. He also designed some of the municipal house in Prague, which is fantastic. I toured that the last time I was in Prague and it's an Art Nouveau masterpiece. I mean, just every room is glorious.

What do you use to organize your inspiration and research?

I use Pinterest a lot for this. I put all of the different sections in there; I have one section for exteriors, one section for windows, doors, kitchen, bathroom. That way I can flick through all of my inspiration pictures and then sketch my own designs. I would like to tell you that the sketches are beautiful, but they're not. They're very scribbly. I try to get my own thoughts out on paper and figure out what I'm going to build. Then I start taking it the next part: how do I get this or that effect? So I decide what materials to use and I start thinking about how can I recreate this. If you go on Etsy or online and you want to buy a mini chandelier, you could spend $400-500 for an LED chandelier and I'm not paying that kind of money. I'm going to build it all myself. It might be a bit scrappy here and there, but you know, it still works. It still looks good. The overall effect works.

I bought a lot of beads, a bag full of random gold curlicues, bought a lot of silicon molds from kits and that went on the furniture, for instance. Or for the moulding, I had a general look in mind and so I just found things that are pretty. I used resin and put them in the molds and when they came out I just stuck them on my cardboard furniture and painted them.