Tiny Cheerful House

Happy Saturday, everyone! We are anxiously looking forward to being able to travel again, we miss it terribly. I was daydreaming about a vacation we took with friends to Portugal and decided to make a little house as a reminder of the colors and beauty of Lisbon using a GSL Tiny House Shrine with Doors. I designed this as an open shadow box so the doors of the shrine were set aside for some future project. 

The shrine is easy to assemble using tacky glue. Here is the base of the structure. It has an opening at the bottom for a little drawer.

The roof section looks like this. I made sure to paint all of the exposed edges of the shrine with dark blue acrylic paint before decorating the space.

The papers that inspired this project are from Ciao Bella's Sicilia collection. Such pretty yellow and blue details. My favorite is the blue and white tile pattern which went on the floor. I gathered some yellow, white and blue paper flowers which were glued in place.

I added a fussy cut bird as the focal point. It was elevated on a few adhesive foam squares for depth. I fashioned a drawer pull from a metal bead and yellow ball head straight pin.

Thanks for stopping by!

GSL Products Used

House Shrine with Doors Tiny

Other Supplies Used

Tacky glue

Acrylic paint

Ciao Bella Sicilia

Paper flowers

Metal bead

Ball head pin

 

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Hello crafty friends!  It's Susan on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog today.  I have a project today with a sentiment that is especially important to me these days.  My family is in the process of moving two states away.  The old house is on the market, still filled 90% of our "stuff".  We spend a lot of time in temporary lodgings, waiting to move on with our lives.  I do a lot of traveling between locations, but I always know that my home is, in fact, where my family is.

I used the Tiny House Shrine w/Doors, but as you can see in the photo above, I opted not to use the doors.

The smallest of the Tudor Rose Singles worked well to fit on my heart.  I planned to only use it as a reverse stencil and press into the paperclay heart, so coated all (why not?) with Mod Podge to help release from the wet paperclay.

It didn't end up making the best impression, but it worked.

In order to suspend the heart, I measured for the center of the roof and floor pieces and poked a small hole.   I also poked holes in the doors for tiny door knobs.  Everything was coated with white gesso.

While that dried I painted the heart and the medallion.  (By this time I'd already decided to use the medallion since the impression was so light.)  Once both were dry I used a toothpick and white glue to attach the two together.

In an experiment I decided to use embossing powder on top.  This is an after-but-still-wet photo.  Eventually the embossing powder peeled off.  Ugh.  I didn't prep the acrylic-painted heart and I think that's the reason.  Lesson learned.  In the finished photos you can see the medallion inside is semi-opaque in parts.  That's the embossing power that I didn't remove.  Instead, I covered the whole heart front with Glossy Accents to seal it.

Magically, the box is assembled!  I put sides and floor together first.  See the curled metal on the roof?  It's the same on the outside floor.  A little fiddly to do, but patience helped.

Not satisfied with a light outside, I painted everything with black gesso.  Not satisfied with a flat surface, I applied light molding paste, then re-gesso'd.  I used a matte varnish to finish.

I used a wee vintage metal button for the drawer handle.  I'm just going to view things like the bent wire above the heart as quirks of life, especially these days!

In this back view, you can see the roof wire shown earlier is now disguised.

Thank for your visit today! -- Susan

Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Used
Tiny House Shrine w/Doors #D13RBS
Mini Tudor Rose Singles #C13K (coming soon!)