Alter It Monthly Challenge. July 2010, Home Sweet Home - Flora's Round House

I recently found a new altered art challenge site that is monthly - whoohoo!
You can find it here. They also have a prize up for grabs, which always helps as an incentive.

I made another round house for a very special friend's birthday, the fantabulous card making Sylvia.
Happy birthday to you!

This is Flora by Evelyn De Morgan which is Sylvia's favourite Pre Raphaelite painting.

Now by my reckoning Flora has been standing barefoot in the garden for 116 years so I thought it was about time someone let her in a house to warm up her toes and maybe take a bath.

Click on the picture to make it bigger so you can see some of the glamour dust sparkle.

The interior and shutters are a gentle antique red not the raging RED that appears in the above photo.
I have got the colour better in this next photo. (I couldn't improve it in photo shop any further not with my limited skills anyway, oh dear.)

The house started out life as a 500 gram container of coffeemate.
Dimensions are:
Diameter 4".
Height of container 5.5", roof is extra on top.

I got the idea for the shutters from an article by Gail Milburn on page 72 of February 2009 Edition of Craft Stamper.


How to make it.

The first thing to consider is that it is much easier to gesso and then decorate by painting one of these.
If you want to wallpaper one, then you must be prepared to measure accurately in order to get a nice finish and expect a fair amount of cursing whilst you're doing it.
Once you've made your first one and made all your mistakes with that one it'll be plain sailing on all future ones! I'll show you my first one in a minute so you can laugh at it.

First of all decide what image (if any) is going to lean out of your window.
Size the image by measuring the height of your tin and allow for an inch or so of headroom in the container otherwise your head will get partially hidden under the overhang of the roof.
Once you have printed out your image, then you can decide on the width and the height of the window and how far up the tin the windowsill needs to start to suit your image.
(Next time I make one I'll take photos as I go along, because it is much easier to see how this goes together that way.)
Cut out your window and divided it into two shutters.
Decide whether you want the shutters to sit concave or convex against the sides of the house.
Mine sit concave because it is easier to glue the shutters open that way .
There is another way to do this that I use and I'll explain later.
Then label each shutter Left and Right so you don't get in a muddle with them.

To attach the shutter to the house cut a rectangular piece of card  that measures the height of the shutters and is about 1.5" wide.
Fold in half lengthways.
Glue one half of the rectangle to the side of the shutter that will sit  flush with the house.
Then wallpaper and decorate the shutter completely before you stick it onto the house.
I used the strong double sided tape (red backed) for all my wallpapering.
Your wallpaper can be designer card or paper, either will work fine.
Alternatively you could use gel medium as a glue.
Or if you want a bit of wiggle room then use white PVA but this would be my last chioce of glues for this project.

Then wallpaper the inside of the house.
When you have a window you don't need to glue the wallpaper down, if you have cut it accurately it will stay in place all on it's own as if by shiny magic.
You then stick the shutters onto the side of the house and then wallpaper the outside of the house.
I glued the shutters back in place with strong white PVA and used pegs to hold the shutters open while the glue dried.
For instructions on how to measure everything and how to glue the beads on and make the roof see this post that gave instructions for making this shell house.

The only difference is that on Flora's roof I glued punched out flowers around the bottom of the roof and if you decide to do this you need to make a circular band of card that will sit on the lip of the tin to raise the roof up enough to allow for the roof decorations to sit correctly.

I also used Tim Holtz grungeboard flourishes that I first painted in a bright green acrylic then I used my finger to apply two different shades of metallic green in a random way. Glued them on with glossy accents.
I also added some pearls and bling, lots and lots of glamour dust to the flowers using a Sakura Quickie glue pen.

The butterflies are Anita's Fairy Wings dimensional butterflies with the awful fugly silver holographic edge cut off.
Now as you know I am partial to a bit of shiny, but these butterflies are delicate woodland shades of brown and the very last thing they need is cheap and ugly silver holographic crap on them. So I used my tiny scissors and cut it all off. Off with the shiny! Never thought I would be saying that. Ever.

So onto my very first piece of 3 dimensional art and my first round house.
I did this one with two windows, one front and one back as it were.
I held the shutters open by tying the two shutters, one from each window, together with fancy yarn.
This is a T Rex shrine that I made for Himself as a Valentines present in 2009.
Okay you can start laughing now,
it's very heartening to me to see how I've improved in just over a year.
The photo's are abysmal quality as well which make matters worse.

Okay stop laughing now or I'll cry.

I am behind on visiting everyone and will try and remedy that shortly.

Happy creating!
Gini
xx