State of Her Art

A quintessential polymath, Margi McInnis Laurin’s vast skillset emboldens her to take on projects from home renovations to handlettering to fine art.

In 2020, Margi’s neighbour gifted her a house. Located in Morrisburg, where she lives, the three-story Victorian house was originally purchased in the 1980s for her friend’s daughter. Unfortunately, the daughter never had much use for it and the house sat empty for more than 30 years until Margi got her hands on it.

Immediately, she knew exactly what she needed to do: change everything. Margi wasn’t a fan of the Victorian aesthetic, so she decided to completely gut and rebuild the house to modernize it. She immediately took out most of the floors and walls but as a result, comprised the structural integrity of the house. That forced her to remove the roof, rebuild it, and add reinforcement throughout the house. While she was at it she relocated windows, a move that allowed for the design of an entirely new kitchen.

Once happy with the outer structure and interior layout, Margi made plans to build the furniture, including a bed, living room set, kitchen cupboards, bookshelves, desks and more—everything she needed to make her house a home. Before she began building, however, she gathered supplies: wood, paint, hinges, glue, tape, string, paper clips, tongue depressors, and coffee stirrers.

Paper clips? Tongue depressors? Coffee stirrers? Not your typical home renovation materials—unless the home you’re fixing up is only 32 inches tall by 24 inches wide by 15 inches deep.

Margi’s home, as you now understand, is a miniature.

Margi, [64] grew up in Brampton, Ontario. What first started as a passion for drawing when she was eight years old quickly turned into a variety of creative interests and talents, from sculpting clay to painting murals.

Despite her love of artistic endeavours, the young creative found art class to be a challenge during elementary school. Always an out-of-the-box thinker, she and her teacher rarely saw eye to eye. “I was horrible in public school with my art because I never did what my teacher wanted me to do,” Margi recalls with a laugh. Luckily, she remained unfazed and continued pursuing her creative interests. Things got easier in high school, thanks to a fabulous art program that helped her hone her skills.

At 18, Margi moved from Brampton to Morrisburg where she later met her husband Sam, owner of Morrisburg’s beloved local newspaper, The Leader. Together, they raised three kids, now all adults. Their two sons live in Morrisburg; their daughter lives in Ottawa.

While tending to family needs, Margi always used her art as a grounding force—and a source of income. She became a self-identified “Maker of Stuff”, a title she proudly displays on her business card. “I spent so much time designing new business cards because I kept changing what I was doing, and I thought, “this is ridiculous, I’ve got to come up with something that’s more generic,” so I just chose ‘Maker of Stuff’.”

For more than twenty years, she sold her work at art shows across Ontario, alternating between selling paintings and handmade journals made of old library books. The journals were always incredibly popular with her customers. The biggest show she did was the annual One of a Kind 12-day show in Toronto, where over the years she sold about 15,000 journals. However, the outcome from selling at art shows wasn’t always consistent. “Some years it was really lucrative, but there were other years where I wasn’t making a whole lot of money.”

In 2018, Margi came to the conclusion that she wasn’t gaining as much from the art shows as she once was in terms of joy and profit. She resolved to stop doing them and while this was a difficult decision, she found a whole new pool of clients, mostly from her local community. People from Morrisburg and beyond are tapping into her talents.

The pandemic necessitated a course correction but never slowed Margi down. She turned to Zoom to host online workshops including some featuring miniature house building. She has designed and sold a line of face masks featuring fun, animated faces (think shark and harmonica player), did caricatures for couples on their wedding day, painted a sign for the awning at the Russell Manor Bed & Breakfast, and worked on countless other projects. It has reached the point that Margi no longer has to look for work. It comes to her.

How does she come by her inspiration to create all these works of art? “I don’t know, I just do it. I don’t have problems thinking of ideas. That’s not usually an issue.” Margi says making art is a part of who she is and feels as though something is missing if she goes too long without creating. In fact, she spends a full eight hours a day working on projects for herself or for her clients.

“I’ll get up Saturday morning and think, “Well, I have to paint something.” It doesn’t feel like a job to me.”

When it comes to miniature houses, her inspiration is also endless. Margi’s passion for all things miniature is relatively recent. It took off at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when she suddenly found herself with the time (not to mention the motivation) to rebuild her own daughter’s dollhouse. Around the same time, she was gifted the other Victorian miniature house. The duelling projects presented an interesting challenge for Margi as art supplies were suddenly in high demand and difficult to find.

That’s when creativity came-a-callin’. The local dollar store quickly became Margi’s go-to art supply store. She transformed coffee stirrers and tongue depressors into beds and chairs, Q-tips into blinds, and foam-covered toothpaste lids into flower vases. “Once you start working on these projects, you look at everything in a different way,” she says while holding a tiny chair fashioned out of a plastic lightbulb.

No miniature design project is too big—or too small, that is—for Margi to tackle. Both of her miniature houses are now filled from top to bottom with furniture, decorations, and even appliances, all handmade by Margi. The homes are furnished with everything you would expect to find in the average full-size house, from full furniture sets down to tiny Dorito and Oreo packages. The bed? Crafted using tongue depressors. The handle on the fridge door? Made out of a ballpoint pen clip. The wine bottles sitting on the kitchen counter? Made of melted glue sticks. The three-inch artwork lining the walls? Meticulously hand painted. The hanging plants? Fashioned using masking tape and marker, hanging from a tiny macrame sling.

“It’s all about scale—the scale of a miniature house is one inch to one foot. So once you know that, then you can follow the plans for a real house and just scale it down.”

As you peek into the rooms of the miniature worlds that she has created, you can’t help but pick up on Margi’s strong sense of interior design style. Clean lines and neutral tones make for a sleek and modern vibe, not a look you would associate with dollhouses from the ’80s. Both miniature houses have been so thoughtfully put together, each with very distinct mid-century modern touches.

The furniture and decorations inside each house have a distinct minimalist vibe, featuring soft neutral colours and classic, clean decorations. Even so, the contents of the houses are far from simple, as each item is so intricately made. It’s impossible not to stare in amazement at the tiny shelf full of books (that even have writing inside!), the throw pillows displayed on the sleek leather couch, or the neatly stacked log pile sitting next to the fireplace. “I think it’s fun. My husband thinks I’m crazy,” she says with a smile and a shake of her head.

With a mind that never runs out of creative ideas, Margi is excited to further explore miniature making. But she is also energized by passing on her passion through miniature room workshops for kids. Over several weeks, she teaches them to build the structure as well as the furnishings—from the furniture to the plants to the lamps to the paintings. These sessions with Margi provide a creative outlet and a source of joy for participants, proving that small things can have a big impact.

Follow Margi’s work on her website: margilaurin.com