The house that snark built

This is the house that snark built.  

It's a bittersweet day for me today.  After three years with the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts team today will be my last post.  I have loved every second I have been on the team and promise I won't be gone forever.  So, for this post I decided to go out the way I came in- full of snark.  

This project was made with the House Oddities box.  This kit includes the box and all the little houses inside.  It's pretty amazing.  

I started with two sheets of watercolor paper and used Distress Oxide Sprays to color them.  The first sheet has Broken China, Wilted Violet, Pumice Stone, and Cracked Pistachio Oxides.  After the initial layer of Oxides I added some PaperArtsy Infusions in Rocky Road. I areas that were still exposed got hit with Distress Ink in the corresponding colors.  

The second sheet was made using Picked Raspberry, Peacock Feathers, and Squeezed Lemonade Oxide Sprays.  I added Infusions in Violeta and filled in the blanks with Distress Ink.

The houses are hinged together using plain white sports tape.  I cut a small piece and put it on the front of the house.  A second piece went on the back so there was no stick exposed tape.  I knew I wasn't going to make the pages too thick with embellishments.  If you want to recreate this house and know you will have chunky pages just make the hinges longer.  The hinges are painted with colors that correspond to the pages.  

I cut the watercolor paper to fit each house and then stamped up the backgrounds.  I used several of Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous sets (CMS364, CMS341, CMS328,CMS302, CMS294,CMS261, CMS187, CMS172,CMS083, and CMS081) for this.  Some of the backgrounds were stamped using Archival ink in Hydrangea and the rest were stamped using Staz-on Pigment inks.  

Part of the stamping was done before the embellishments were added.  After the paperdolls, sentiments, and other bits were glued down I added a bit more stamping. 

Once all the stamping was done I went back in with various gel pens to add doodles and scribbles.  

So this is what the front row of houses looks like all stretched out.  

You can see I added bits to some of the pages.  The little crown, chain, party hats, and coin add just a bit of bulk but I took that into account when making the hinges. 

 Here are the back pages of the house. 

 Now these could be the front.  It just depends on how you fold them up. 

 I had so much fun picking out the paperdolls and the snarky sentiments for each. 

The exterior is quite simple to put together. 

I painted the exterior black and the interior with Dina Wakley's Lime.  Once it was all dry I used Beacon 3 in 1 glue to stick it all together.  Don't glue the front to the box or you won't be able to get inside! I gave the exterior a spritz of gold ink spray just so it wasn't flat black.

 The interior was splattered with the same color paints I used to color the hinges in the book. You can see the little houses all fit right inside the box.  

You can hinge the door to the houses, so when you pull the door open all the houses come right out.  I decided to do mine a bit differently and I actually used Tim Holtz hinges to hinge the door to the box.  The door panels were covered using the same background paper that covers the houses inside. 

Here you can see the top of the box was stuck to the door using a layer of foam tape.  The door is hinged to the side of the box using the metal hinges.  I used an awl and then was able to use brads to attach the hinges.  Please pardon my hand in here, the wooden base I use to take my photos is a bit warped so sometimes projects want to fall over.  

The final touches were added by spraying the finials with Oxide sprays in Peacock Feathers and Cracked Pistachio.  They got splattered with the paint too.  The baseboard doll was edged with gold(and the entire backside is painted gold too).  He got his snarky sentiment and was glued to the box using super glue.  

I hope you enjoyed my project today.  I had so much fun making it! 

Happy Crafting,

Jess