Why I started making houses out of matches

People often ask me why I started making a house out of matches. I am not 100% sure why I turned to making a house, but I do know why I used matches. It wasn't long after I had read an article about this man, Jack Hall, that I started thinking about model making. I have always be into model making and fascinated by stop motion animation. Just making tiny little things from stuff that most people wouldn't have even thought of. I had read about Jack Hall around 2006 or so but it wasn't until late into 2008 that I even tried to make something.

I have always been interested in trains and so I decided to try my hand at an old train car (The hobo hoppin' kind.) I wanted it to look real so I was thinking about what I could use, and thought that matches would make a good scaled down looking board. I never would have thought of using matches had I not read about Jack Hall a few years before.

I started with the door, because that is really the reason I wanted to make the train in the first place. I wanted to make a wood panel door with the two crossing beams across the front that made the "X", for some reason that catches my fancy. At this point I don't fully know why or how it turned into me making a house but it did, and it ended up looking like this. After I realized the house was going to be too big I scrapped the idea and just made it into a kind of stand. I ended up throwing it away sometime later. I wish that I hadn't.

A month or so after I graduated in 2009 I wanted to take another shot at making a house. Now I knew a little more about building with matches and how to make a much smaller house. This became the first and only house that I have finished thus far. You can see the house here. It took me a week to make it, base and all.

I didn't start anything else until 2012, which is the house that I am working on now. I wanted to scale up the size of the project. Which wasn't too hard, as the first house was only just over a matchstick and a half long. I still want to build that train car that I never even really started. I have a few other projects on my mind as well.

I am always looking for new things to try. Looking at how to scale items down. I want to try and work into making stop motion animation movies. I really like and study the company Laika, which made Coraline, Paranorman, and are currently working on Box Trolls. But for now I will just make things out of matchsticks.

I will leave you with a list of awesome things people have made with matchsticks.