I have been going to college through Bryan College's Adult Studies Program that I started in March. I won't finish until June 2012, so I have to catch my mini-time when I can. This past weekend, I finished my homework for the week and with no other plans, I decided to make minis.
I thought about what I wanted to do all week beforehand, just the planning and thinking about what I was going to do was fun. I have quite a few projects that I have started that I could work on, but I finally settled on a swap from 2007 that included a kit. Wow five years ago! It doesn't seem like that long ago.
Attic roombox swap
In 2007, I participated in a lot of swaps. Because I was doing swaps every month, I didn't have time to do as many projects. This one was a really special swap as we got a roombox kit from one of the swappers. The other swaps were wonderful as well.
Deciding to finish this as a weekend project was a really good idea for me. It did take me all weekend because I did other things around the house, like grocery shopping, laundry and watch movies with DH.
I messed up on the wallpaper twice. Fixing it slowed me down. First mistake was choosing to print the printies on plain paper. I have an HP printer and I normally use some HP brochure paper to print my wallpaper. I have had great success with using the combo of all HP products so I should have know better. But I was out of the lighter weight brochure paper and used the plain paper instead. When I glued it down - I use tacky or ultimate, but ultimate was runny and could have been part of my problem. When I checked it to go to the next step I found the paper had turned reddish in several places. So I removed it (wetting it helped remove it the fastest). Reprinted on some HP brochure paper I had that was thicker.
I glued that paper on and continued. After getting the wall stud pieces on and the walls are glued to the floor, I realized that I had used the roof as the floor. The thing about that is I should have figured that out sooner because I should have checked my parts better. I even dry-fitted the side wallstuds that were two seperarte pieces with the chimney and saw the hole didn't line up, but I was overly confident I had my pieces figured out.
Only reason I figured it out was when I test fitted the roof (acutally the floor) and figured out there should be a hole in the roof for the chimmny. I thought the hole when in the floor but it wasn't lining up and so I just assumed it was cut wrong. I figured out I was the one wrong. Because I had glued my wallstuds to the wallpaper, I had to reprint the wallpaper again. when I removed the wallstuds from the wallpaper there were places where the tears would have been ok but in others was just too much.
Thankfully I had figured out the wetting idea and so that was a quick fix the second time around.
So I learned to print only on HP paper (because that is my type of printer) for best results and secondly, if it isn't fitting together properly, try using the other pieces. Don't assume the kit is wrong, consider that I identified the pieces wrong.
With regards to my second learning experience, it would have helped if the kit maker had done something to label the parts. Either a small drawing of each piece or a label or something. Even a simple - the roof is the one with the hole would have helped me. So for my own kit making I will continue to label the pieces to help avoid confusion. And no I am not saying this was a bad kit or I am better at kit making, just something that would have helped me. This was a great kit.
Things I did different than the kit:
First I made my own newsprint wallpaper. The kit did not include the printies already printed. We had been provided with the pictures to print ourselves. I make my own, I went to my local paper on the internet and made copies of the thumbnails of each page of the most recent edition. Because they were thumbnails not meant to be readable and that was ok because they weren't readable anyway. But it is neat for me to know what is there.
Second, I used the siding shingles on my roof. These were made of paper and thinner which I like. I had decided I would use a gray wash on the roof so using wood shingles was not important.
I made my own siding from the brochure paper I used to print my wallpaper. It is thicker than plain paper. I got out a paper crimper that my mom gave me last year in some scrapbook stuff. (She got it at a yard sale.) I ran the paper through a few times as I wanted many indentions to give me a look of abestos siding that was popular on houses for awhile. I think cut into .5 inch strips. Then I used scissors to cut the shingle sections without cutting apart. I didn't mark them before cutting so sometimes when I overlapped the previous row, my cuts lined up instead of offset. I was okay with this.
Third difference I did was to not stain anything. I did this partly because of time and allowing it to dry, but I based my decision on the idea that an attic is sometimes unfinished and staining to me gave to much finishing. Also some of the components may have been stained prior to the kit shipping to me. I left those as is except on the back wall on the shingled side I painted the roof trim as stain didn't seem to match up with my painted roof and siding.
Fourth difference is that I painted my roof and painted the siding I made.
Here is my finished project:
Click this link to see more photos of this project.
All the items were from the swap.
attic kit - lp designs - Liz West
barn framed print, gold frame silhouette, brown wreath, pink and silver lamp, red/white/blue wreath, cardboard boxes, heart wreath, 2 blue policemen, yellow, blue and green bowls - Joyce
hump back chest, mannequin - Karen Cary
hat boxes, wood chest (opened) silver hat stand with blue hat - Ruth Frank
phonograph, black mantle clock - Laura Miller
white shawl (in opened chest) - Bobby Bain
black, burgandy, tan, royal blue suitcases and 3 leather books - Joann Jacot
a 3 section christmas tree in box (in the box in the back), christmas ornaments in box, santa, box of garland and wrapping paper - Doris McIntryre 'Pooh'
beat up old dresser with mirror - Preble McDaniel
2 comments:
This looks really great! Love all the details!`
I love your little attic scene. It has all the neat things that I would love to go digging thru in an attic... LJ
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