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Living in Lille has (occasionally) a few perks. When I found out that Hannah Levesque from the account @lesbeauxjours_miniatures was organizing workshops to create this miniature garden in Lille, I jumped at the chance.
Hannah welcomed us, on May 8th, into her new, bright, and incredibly tidy studio. She had decorated it with flowers and prepared an amazing homemade lemonade. There were six of us, all fans of her work.
Hannah began by presenting her work and how her techniques have evolved. All of her models are at a 1:50 scale, which allows for a reasonable size even for the huge buildings she usually creates. Everything is imagined and designed by her on a computer. Then, the repetitive elements are cut with a machine (similar to my Silhouette machine but much, much bigger), and assembled and painted by hand. The tiny details are cut by hand.
What sets Hannah apart from other model makers is her decision to work exclusively with paper. While others might use wood or fabric for certain elements, she deliberately embraces the challenge of crafting everything from paper alone. It’s an artistic choice, but it also gives her creations a unique look, instantly recognizable among thousands. They exude a delicate fragility, as if a simple gust of wind could blow them away — but rest assured: everything is carefully glued and firmly secured, allowing the models to be shipped across the world without a hitch.
The second distinctive feature of her work is the abundance of plants in her creations. She has developed her own unique method for crafting and “planting” flowers in her miniature gardens — a technique we’ll be learning during this workshop.
She recently started offering miniature kits that you can make at home. What’s great about her kits is that you don’t need anything else, it’s all included.
Here’s the garden we were meant to create:
We were guided step by step. The instructions were very clear, but she didn’t try to influence us either—we were free to choose the furniture (from 3 options), the flooring (3 options), and a wide variety of pre-cut “plants” and flowers.
I didn’t even notice the 3 hours go by.
Here is my creation:
I think my garden would have looked better if I had grouped the plant colors together and arranged them in circles, but I managed to make it look more coherent in the end. A few spots left for the June workshops, don’t wait – these workshops are a rare opportunity!
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