Baba Yaga Haunted House by Guest Designer Emma

Hello Gypsy Soul fans.  Today we are featuring a guest designer , Emma.  Emma is a talented artist and we are excited to share the projects she makes with our products.

 My name is Emma and I have been crafting as long as I can remember. I am a tactile person so I especially love anything with texture and beautiful colors. Lately I have been drawn to embroidery, knitting and crochet, but I love tinkering with mixed media and making weird little critters.

Hi everyone! I'm so honored and excited to be a first-time guest designer for Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts.

There is something about the first days of October that demand you to turn your attention to the shifting season, and thoughts of all things spooky start bubbling up to the surface. Stories of haunted houses with dark, foreboding windows linger in the mind. I am personally a huge chicken when it comes to haunted houses, but one haunted house I always found fascinating is the Baba Yaga haunted house so why not create my own!

I started by taking two sets of the Tiny Shadowbox Houses 1, cutting them easily with a sharp exacto knife, and painted them in layers of red and brown acrylic paint. I added Staz-On stamp ink in Black applied with a sponge, until the overall patina was to a place where I liked it.

Then I assembled the two houses, and glued them together with white glue to form one bigger structure. I used a few of the House Ornament Window Trim pieces to form my house's windows and after applying some paint, glued them to the house. I colored in the windows with more paint. Then I decided that maybe Baba Yaga enjoys hanging out on a wee porch to spy on naughty children; I took the Ornamental Birdcages Shape Set and deconstructed two birdcages to form a railing. I cut out a square of cardboard to be the porch base, and then glued it to the house, attaching the railing at the same time.

To make the legs I used some scrap wire I had around the house to twist into the general shape of bird feet. I used my trusty hot glue gun to layer over the wire and let it cool until it formed a flexible layer of "muscle", and then painted it with acrylic paint in an off-white color I had on hand. Once that was dry, I used the sponging technique with more Staz-On black ink to lightly texturize the feet, and then added another layer of acrylic paint, this time in yellow-orange. Before that had time to dry off, I dabbed it with a paper towel, and then let it all dry.

Again with the hot glue gun, I secured the feet to the bottom of the house. With some dried moss I have in my stash, I liberally applied it to the bottom side of the house to cover up the join where the feet and the house meet, and played with the arrangement until I was happy with the appearance. I decided that the house was missing a chimney topper, and created that with a straw, some crumpled foil, and a tiny bit of cardboard cut into a slight cone. This was all glued to the roof, along with another healthy helping of moss.

Supplies Used
Ornamental Birdcages Shape Set (D69C)
House Ornament Window Trim (D172HW)
Tiny Shadowbox Houses 1 (C20A)
Staz-On Black Stamp Pad
Sponge
Paint
White glue
Hot glue
Cardboard
Wire
Moss
Straw
Foil