"I met my current husband about twelve years ago through a national railway group where we were both committee members and he loves the fact that I am a modeler. We got married at the Royal Court in Guernsey in 2004."
Just when everything seemed to be going great in both her personal and professional life, there was one more hurdle that Jax would have to manage. A head injury would set her back once again.
"I am grateful that, following my head injury and subsequent brain hemorrhage in 1997, I have regained my speech and numerical abilities. I took about 10 years off miniatures at this time, so some folks think I am relatively new to miniatures, not realizing that I've been around a lot longer than them." Today, Jax has a business that has grown to three distinct yet sometimes overlapping branches.
"I have three legs to my business and three separate sets of stock. One for dollhouse shows, one for railway shows and one for gift shows. I am often asked 'why trees?' People frequently don't realize that I don't just do trees, but generally they are what people ask for and therefore it seemed the obvious thing to specialize in, since it meant that I could work for both dollhouse and railways. I currently have a monthly order for all this year for a museum building a historic diorama of the locale; a one-meter tall tree with individual leaves; some 43rd scale flowers; some 76th scale flowers."
While many miniaturists and artisans also have collections of their own, Jax finds pleasure in the creative process and jokes that the only thing she collects are crafts supplies.
"I have always been an artisan - to me the joy is in making, not in collecting. A few years ago I made a dollhouse for a museum with wood, which I steamed to bend to shape, and made all the contents. About five years ago I made a paper mache stump tree house in 24th scale. A triple stump with a spiral staircase inside one stump, and a mezzanine floor. The front is on a framework so it lifts off, and the top also lifts off for furnishing."
Jax does not have a preference in the materials she uses.
"My medium depends on the commission I am working on. It may be clay, paper, metal or wood."
She is constantly growing both as an artist and a business woman, expanding both the type of trees she makes and the products she offers to her customers.