Crooked House
On Smaller and Smaller Adventures, I had accepted the Firecracker challenge and for my efforts my name was the lucky one drawn to receive a Crooked house made by Susie Newell. I'll be honest. First I didn't in any way enter the challenge in order to win (drawing was of participants and not who was best or most creative, etc). I was just interested in the project. Second on hearing that I was the lucky drawing winner I was both excited and not so much. It is so cool to win, but I just wasn't enthused about the crooked house. Don't get me wrong, I think it is a really neat project, it just hadn't drawn me in...yet.The house came and I found it to be very charming but again, not so exciting to me. I knew that it was something that Susie had started but had decided to change gears. Pam Junk Knapp the owner of SASA, had rescued them (or at least I think this to be the case) from the garbage to become drawing prizes. So knowing it was a reject for someone else I was not concerned that it was not finished and ready to move in. It was missing a chimney and also one window without the mesh. All things I could deal with. But the appeal of it wasn't there.
Then Pam posted photos on SASA of her finished crooked house. She had previously shared the interior. Now that did appeal. She had done it with melted BPF and painted in green and purple. It was cool. Then in the finished landscaped photos were the green lush landscape and purple flowers.
That's when it hit me.
The artist who is going to live there would never leave it yellow. She's like Mr. Pine and his purple house. First, she loves purple. Secondly, others have a yellow house, so this one shouldn't be.
When I get a kit, I don't want it to be like everyone else. I rarely if ever bother trying to find the same color of paint the kit maker used. Maybe I stick to a similar color, but exact color is not an issue for me.
So I painted over the yellow and green with purple. It took a couple of coats - mixing and blending until me and the artist who will live there were happy.
I forgot to take pics of the house as I got it, but in this photo you can see the color it started as.
And here you can see the results of the purple
Pam had also changed her roof moving away from the green to mixed/aged green. She added shingles. My artist liked the shingles but suggested I go with black and to use some of those decorative cut scissors. I found in my stash some black cardboard. They were a folder for my kid's portraits. They have a slight texture and made it easy-peasy to make into shingles. I loved that I didn't have to measure or be straight. The scissors I used were the pinking shear style. I glued them on without even eyeballing the straightness - after all it is a crooked house. Ok, I admit that sometimes I eyed and then made the row more crooked. LOL
Keeping with the black and purple theme with accents of white. I let the artist come out and play with the inside as well. The inside has some texture on it and so I dabbed purple inside and swirled it around. Once I was satisfied with the overall color, I decided it might be fun to do some splatter painting. Of course that worked very well.
Along the same line, the idea of black/white tile was very prominent, but the idea of straight lines was not what came to mind. I played a bit with finding images on line, then got out pen and paper and made up some samples. I hand-painted the floors according to one of the samples. I drew wavy lines going east to west then lines north to south. Then I painted every other section black. It helped me to dot them first, then go back and fill in.
I had also liked what Pam did with her not full floors so that is how I ended up with curved floors.
Next I knew I needed a base to put the house on. I was working on 3 projects at once so I made three bases - building them from blue or pink builder's foam (a dense foam that cuts easy and is lightweight). Each one was built to fit in a 12" x 8" dome. I usually purchase these at my local chain craft stores.
One base was for the Crooked house, another for the Mushroom house and the third for an Egg house.
This post was intended to be posted a long time ago.
Not sure why I didn't post it, but since I did all the above more happened, so here that is:
At some point I decided the base I had made was not working so I built up a new one. This time I didn't use the ridgd wrap on it but used celluclay instead. I wanted a crooked lane so I worked that part until I was happy with it. It is a tad steep but this in mini world.
Influnced by the project Pam did and also the centerpieces, I considered having a cave under the house, but decided it wasn't needed.
The flowering trees are some artifical things I bought possibly for another project and then didn't use. I did cut them before using them as they were in bunches and taller. The color differences was part of the bunch.
After all the fun I had with the Winter Centerpiece base, I knew I wanted something fun here. I liked the crooked lane rhyme so here is where it went and it goes all the way around.
I painted the base another color at first and didn't like it. Then I believe I did the floor and the idea of using black came to me. The letters are done with a silver paint pen and I added three dots here and there that are same color as the purple flowers.
Wire Tree
For some reason, I decided this should have a crazy tree. I had loved using the powder puff trees in the winter centerpiece so I wanted something fun. I know I took pics of this tree at some point and posted it to the web, but couldn't find them. It could have been to a group although still couldn't find where I thought they could be. Should have been on my computer but am thinking those pics got eaten when I had a computer crash after a switch from one to another. I had recovered some others but didn't find these.
So here is new ones
I'm not totally happy with the steps, but not sure I want to try to build them up. If I do then the path would be extra step right there.
In this pic, can also see the new windows. I used paint only for the lines around and the trim. This is how the house was painted before rather than having raised trim. On the inside I did add the wire mesh (art sculpture mesh) and cut window frames. I did those by placing a piece of card on the inside tracing the opening, then cutting that hole and then cutting a quarter inch larger.
The landscaping and around the outside of the house is done.
That's all that is left is the inside.
