- When I was small, one of my favorite books was called "The Borrowers" and I read it over and over again.

And I loved in my imagination, thinking of teeny tiny people hiding and living in houses and no one knew they were there.

And so I always see little spots where The Borrowers could have been, where they might have made a little room and I like to play with that.

And now my passion is miniatures.

(gentle music) When I'm doing a miniature, I almost always want it to look like someone may have just been there and they've just left the room.

A little cup of tea, a book left open on a bed.

(gentle music) I like to think about the people that I'm making things for and make it fit them.

My daughter's apartment had an outlet for a kitchen phone that was just a hole, and since no one uses phones anymore, so I created a little scene to go in that little hole of the phone outlet.

She is a traveler, she has spent a lot of time in Europe, I bet she spent a lot of time sitting in little cafe tables watching people walk by, and so i included that for her.

(gentle music) My sister is an amazing cook and so I've got an unused electrical outlet and made a little kitchen scene in the electrical outlet with the plug front, connected up front with magnets.

So it looks like a plug, but you can take the front off and it's a little kitchen scene.

(gentle music) I really like the teeny tiny mini-Altoid tins best of all, so I've made several things in those.

My son has one of my Altoid attends.

I have a friend who asked me if I would redo her library in a miniature form.

It's a totally different thing for me in that usually I just make things up and they don't have to match.

I can change it as I go along and if it works, it works.

If it doesn't, I can toss it out.

(gentle music) And so this one, I'm trying to match something that already exists and so it's a different kind of challenge, which I'm enjoying.

I enjoy knowing that a piece of my art was with my loved ones.

You see things now you think, oh, I wonder what that could be little?

A collection of some of the neck ties that I will use for furniture.

Blister packets from medicine is what I use for the can lights, magazines that have a spine that's glued, cut it into pieces and you have a little book.

(gentle music) - I'm David McGuirt, co-owner of the Violin Shop here.

We sell and rent and repair the whole violin family of instruments.

With Amy, our families have been friends for about 30 years and one day she had posted something about the dollhouse and I messaged her and I said, I've always thought it would be really cool for somebody to make a dollhouse in an old cello.

- And I was like, well I could try that, that would be fun.

So he was able to give me a cello and I took the front off of it and decided to turn it into a shop and a workshop and an apartment.

- She kind of developed a story in her head about the scenario of what happens in this space and who lives here.

- [Amy] Whenever I'm making something, I like to make up stories about 'em 'cause it helps me think of how to decorate things and what to make.

And so in the cello, I was thinking that the upstairs apartment belonged to a girl named Melody and her grandfather, who she just called Grandpa, owned the violin shop, and he wanted her to work with him.

And so he told her that if she came to work for him in the violin shop, that she could redecorate the upstairs anyway that she wanted to.

(upbeat music) - And just began to furnish it, and it's multiple floors.

The showroom here you can see how the violins are hanging and she actually duplicated the wooden racks that we have the violins hanging from.

And lord knows how she made these tiny little violins.

- I can't tell you how long it took, but it did not come quickly.

- [David] She asked me to give her any parts and pieces off of broken things and she would repurpose them.

- [Amy] The checkout desk in the store, that's a piece of the wood from the original cello.

- Up here on the top floor of this living quarters, there's a bed and the headboard and the footboard are violin bridges.

We have a lamp that is the thumbscrew off of a cello end pin rod.

- The sink in basement is off a chin rest off of a teeny tiny violin.

- We have a junky old shelf back there in the shop and she copied it down to the horse hair that is hanging from it, that is for rehairing bows.

She cuts some hair off of her dog, Junie, as tail to copy the horse hair.

She has a band saw that, I don't even know how she did it, but it's very detailed and it's a copy of ours.

- From growing up in my dad's shed that had a band saw that I would use, there was sawdust all over the floor, and so I sprinkled sawdust on the floor.

- So many details.

Here, on the checkout counter, she's put the computer monitor and it actually has numbers and writing on it, which I just now noticed.

It's like I'm still discovering things about this piece every day.

We love it, it's a fun conversation piece, parents love showing it to small children.

(gentle music) - Wonder, joy, I hope that people look at the things I make and it strikes their imagination and gives them stories.

(gentle music)