Monday, October 16, 2017

Wee ME Bookhouse

For each of the persons who participated in Pam Junk's ME challenge, she sent a participation prize. This consisted of two printies to make little houses - a gingerbread house and a ME bookhouse. 
After my initial assemble of this wee house, I decided it needed to be elevated (nicer) and so I found a plastic box it would fit in and added a base.

Here was my thought process:
The plastic box I found was fairly tall relative to the wee house, so I decided it needed a base to raise the house up above the black bottom and fill the clear top without being too high.

Build a base from paper
I pulled out my green scrapbook paper and cut and assembled a simple base (an inverted box). Then when I fit it into the plastic box I realized I had the same problem with the roof I had with the 1:48 scale one - the bottom of house is set to the edge of the base, but my roof wasn't so the house was tilted when in the plastic cover. (This won't do at all.) To solve this problem, I just trimmed the roof.
Next I wanted 'grass', so I pulled out my landscape materials and found a green that matched the paper I had used. I spread glue on the base and proceeded to cover with this fine green foam. Only I realized too late that the foam wasn't fine enough. So I scraped off that foam and then ended up cutting around the house to remove from the paper base.

Build a foam core base
Rather than cut out another paper base, I thought about what other way could I achieve my goal. Normally I would be using foam core or builders foam. Foam core I use is roughly quarter inch thick and builders foam is closer to half an inch. I decided the foam core was the better height.
Using foam core meant I would need to hide the foam. 
I cut a strip of black paper (also scrapbook paper scraps). I cut it long enough to wrap around, but I measure to one side, then bent the corner neatly, then did for the next one. But I forgot to do for the next side. (I'm sure I was in too much a hurry to use glue which tends to get me in trouble.) So I glued to the first and second side. That's when I realized forgot to do the third bend. But I was able to do it before I glued. The last bend wouldn't have been needed if I hadn't somehow got the first side a tiny bit off. Rather than trimming at the last corner I had to trim a little extra to wrap around at the bend. It worked out ok. (The reason I didn't measure and bend all four was due to my concern that the foam core wasn't exactly square to the one inch I had cut to.)

Landscaping the base
For the step and the flagstone I used paper. The step from a thicker paper and the flag stone from thin paper. I glued the step in front of the house and painted it, Then I painted a brown path for under the flagstone. Then I cut strips of the thin paper, then cut into random squares and rectangles, gluing them individually. After gluing both, I painted solid grey on the step and several colors on the flagstone, just dabbing here and there to give a stone look.

I decided to donate the green foam I had used previously and decided to not use. The reason is the color seems too bright almost neon for my taste. I had never used it that I can recall for that very reason - the color seemed unnatural. 
Instead I used a mix of yellow and mostly green that I had in my stash. I am not sure if the product comes that way, or if someone had mixed it. This is the very fine foam that gives a fairly close layer which is closer to scale for this wee little house, (although probably a foot high in real life scale.)

For landscaping, I also use a material that comes in clumps. To get these wee little bushes, I just tore off tiny pieces and glued them around the house.


Decorating the base
The bigger ME book house had wood veneer added to it that I then painted black. I also added a cutout detail around it. Then I had painted white polka dots. I didn't havemuch room to do that on the paper covered foam core base, so I left it as black. (Using colored paper was cool, since I didn't have to paint.) Instead I added the same cutout detail to the black plastic base of the box. Now the wee house and the bigger one coordinate.

I do not have any micro scale furniture at the moment so the interior is empty.

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