home is where the heart is

Hi everyone, Ann here today,  sharing these valentine putz houses.
 I love decorating my house for the various holidays throughout the year; with Valentine's day just around the corner, I thought it would be a lot of fun to create a small vignette of sweet putz.

The GSLC chipboard house ornament kit makes these super simple to create, and you can let your imagination go with all of the details. Each kit contains the pieces for one house, including a bottom with access flap in case you want to put a battery operated tea light inside. The houses have holes in the roof for hanging; however, since I will be using mine in a home decor display, I have simply covered the holes. I use some of the additional house parts that are available, like the house ornament porch, the house ornament window trims, and the the house ornament chimney and dormers. There are even more pieces that can be incorporated that you may be interested in, available in the shop.

The first step is constructing the basic house. The house ornament kit arrives flat. The pieces should be carefully removed from the surround. Run a thin line of glue along the edges and then secure the tabs into the slots and allow to dry. I suggest adding small pieces of mica or acetate on the inside at the window locations before gluing the roof in place. (This is a step I did not include on my houses, but looking back wish that I had. Having the windows sealed would be helpful when adding the glitter to the outside surfaces.)

When the three house kits are assembled, the next step is deciding which additional features to add to each house. The chimney and dormers set includes two dormers and one chimney. These can all be used on one house or split up among the houses. You can see that I use the chimney on one house and two dormers on another, while my third house uses a full set, two dormers and the chimney, as well as the porch. The window trims are added later. Location and placement of the additional house features is entirely up to you, simply glue them in place with a craft glue and allow to dry.

 
With the additional features in place, It is time to paint the houses. [Note: I recommend attaching the window trims AFTER the initial paint coat] I select colors to represent the Valentine's holiday: pinks, blush, victorian velvet, and cameo as well as brushed pewter. I paint directly on the chipboard, two light coats, allowing time to dry in between each coat. When the base coats are completely dry, I add the painted window trims to the houses with glue. [Note: a pair of tweezers is very handy during this step.] It is much easier to paint the trims prior to attaching them to the house.

 

Using a paintbrush and distress collage medium, I paint the areas where I want the glitter to stick. It is easiest to do one roof plane/side of the house at a time. The degree that the house is glittered is entirely up to you. I use a super fine clear glitter (Distress clear rock candy) since the houses are small. You could use colored glitter if you prefer. A more chunky glitter would give an entirely different appearance. I prefer the look of a fine coat of glitter which allows the details to show. I want each of my houses to be a little different, so one house is only glittered on the roof and I added other embellishments to the exterior walls. One of the other houses is covered completely in glitter, while the third is only glittered on the walls, dormers and chimney.

I added extra details by incorporating some X & O sequins along the eaves, a large heart brad at the circular window, heart trim as a wainscoting, and even added shingles to the roof on one of the houses. For my roof shingles, I used painted die cuts from the village rooftops die; however, Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts makes a wide variety of shingle styles that would work very well.

My putz houses are arranged on an antique silver serving tray with glass glitter and dyed bottlebrush trees to create a sweet valentine vignette. I hope you are inspired to create your own putz houses, they really are so much fun to make and adorn, and can be done up in any style you can imagine.

Thank you so much for stopping by today,
I really appreciate it.
~Ann


  Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts used:
House Ornament Kit (x3)
House Ornament Porch
House Ornament Chimney and Dormers (x2)
House Ornament Window Trims (x2)

A Wizard of Oz Tribute

Happy Saturday, everyone! Today I have a really fun piece to share with you, my tribute to one of the best movies of all time – The Wizard of Oz. I was inspired to make this when I saw the GSL House Ornament Kit 

Let me take you through how it was made.

The first thing I assembled was the GSL House Ornament Base. It's basically just a short box. It has a top, bottom and four sides. Super simple to put together with a bit of tacky glue.

After the glue dried, I painted the sides with black acrylic paint and added a yellow brick road image that was printed on cardstock.

The house comes with the floor, four walls and two roof pieces. The chimney section may be found on GSLHouse Ornament Chimney and Dormers. A cool feature of the floor is it has a pre-scored section that you can cut  and remove if you want to set your little ornament house on top of a battery operated candle. For this project, I left it in place.

For the farmhouse siding, I printed a photo of barn wood onto cardstock, shrunk it to size and cut to fit using an X-Acto knife.

I found a tiny black and white checked Paper Studio scrapbook paper for the house flooring. I painted the window grills with white acrylic paint before gluing the siding paper on the house.

The trims come in two versions, with and without upper panes. I painted all of the window trims white and then decided which ones I wanted to use. I'll save the others for a future tiny project.

Once the trims were in place, it was time to glue on the roof pieces. The rubber band is just to hold the roof pieces in place while the glue dried. I chose a Tim Holtz Idea-Ology paper to cover the roof.

The witch's feet were sculpted out of white polymer clay then baked.

I painted the shoes on using a bright red acrylic paint once they cooled off. I added stocking stripes with a black sharpie. To complete the look I coated the shoes in tacky glue then dipped them in fine red glitter.

For the foliage, I used a combination of Tiny Treasures Mini Grass in a Jar, Flower Soft Meadow and

dried moss, all applied with tacky glue.

The shoes and house were glued in place to complete the project. 

 Thanks for stopping by!

Gypsy Soul Items Used

House Ornament Kit

House Ornament Window Trims

House Ornament Chimney and Dormers

House Ornament Base

Other Items Used

Tacky glue

E6000 glue

Acrylic paint

Printed images

Paper Studio checked paper

Tim Holtz Idea-Ology paper

Tiny Treasures Mini Grass in a Jar

Flower Soft – Meadow

Moss

Polymer clay

Sharpie pen

Fine red glitter

Glitter House Lane

Hello crafty friends!  It's Susan on the Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts blog today, sharing a bit of cold weather cheer during this August heat.

I've created a wee Glitter House Lane using 3 House Ornament Kits, accessories, and a platform.

I used 3 house ornament kits - primed 2 with gesso after taking them off the original chipboard sheet, and primed the third while still attached.  Both needed touch-up gesso on edges after gluing together.

I assembled chimneys, a dormer, and porches, and added those and window trims to the houses and painted with gesso.  In the future, I'll wait to gesso until after this step.

I used the 12" x 4" platform for the lane.  Gesso'd white and added coordinating scrapbook paper to the bottom (photo below). 

I used most of 3 sets of House Ornament Fence and cut them down for better scale.  Once all the glue dried I gesso'd the fence white and then painted it light teal.  Once *that* dried, I finished the platform with white acrylic paint.

I painted the houses in a variety of pastel colors and added white to the tops for snow.  I used white glue to paint small areas and added clear glass glitter.  This was a long process with all 3 houses and the platform, but patience was the key.

Earlier, I cut out vellum shapes for the inside walls, and after all paint was done I added glue to the edges and slid the vellum pieces up through the bottom openings.

Front

Back

Snow!

Inside the platform

Thanks for your visit today!

Cheers
Susan

Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Used

Platform 12x4 #C3P
(3) House Ornament Kits #D172HO
(3) House Ornament Chimney & Dormers #D172HC
(3) House Ornament Window Trim #D172HW
(2) House Ornament Porch #D172HP
(3) House Ornament Fence # D172HF


Other Supplies Used

White glue
White gesso
Pastel acrylic paints
Diamond Dust clear glass glitter
Vellum paper

Winter Clock by Sandy Trefger

Hello again everyone! Sandy here with a lovely winter project.  Christmas will be here in just a few days.  I thought I'd switch from all the Christmas decorating and projects to something more wintry but certainly could be used for a Christmas decor piece.

This will be my last project for now for Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts.  I've been on the design team since November 2016 and have had a marvelous, wonderful fun time creating with all these gorgeous chipboard sets.  I want to thank Gina of Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts for her generosity of providing so many wonderful pieces to work with and for the opportunity to expand out of my normal creating with paper to also using mixed media and chipboard.  I've had a wonderful time.  I also want to thank my design team members for their friendship and inspiring ideas.  I will continue to use Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts kits and showcase them on my blog when I use them in other projects but I will no longer be on the team as an educator posting here on the GSL blog.  Thank you to all of you that have followed along with me here on GSL and also stepped out of your comfort zone to create with chipboard elements.

And now on to how I created this Winter Clock.

Step 1:   Lay out all the chipboard pieces you plan to use and wipe the black laser residue from the edges with a damp cloth or baby wipe.

Step 2:  Start working with the clock first.  Apply glue to the back side of a ring and attach it to the back clock piece.

Step 3:  Continue gluing rings to the clock back as shown below.  Finish by gluing on the front clock piece.  Allow to dry.

Step 4:  Paint the clock as shown. I used black paint.

Step 5: For this project, I selected to use just the front piece of the mini chipboard house kit.  Paint with your choice of paint color.  I used a light turquoise blue.

Step 6:  Paint snowflakes and window/door frames white.  I painted the deer white as well but decided to not use it in this project.

Step 7:  Once the paint on the clock has dried, apply Crackle Accents to give it vintage texture and allow to dry and crackle (usually overnight).

Step 8:  Use the circle template from the clock kit and trace a circle onto the patterned paper you wish to use for the inner background of the clock.  I selected the signature paper from Graphic 45 Winter Wonderland for a snowy scene.

Step 9:  Use an embossing dauber to add embossing ink and glitter powder to the snowflakes. Emboss with Heat Gun.

Step 10:  Use a brush to lightly add glue and glitter to the house.  Allow to dry.

Step 11:  Glue the door and window frames to the house.

Step 12:  Glue the house and two of the snowflakes into the clock.

Step 13:  Add Platinum Nuvo Embellishment Mousse onto the black of the clock over the Crackle Accents that has dried.  This tones down the black of the clock and accents the crackles.

Step 14:  Add Art Glitter Glue that dries white to the roof top, above the windows and underneath too as well as under the house for a snow bank.

Step 15:  While the glue is still wet, generously sprinkle with glitter. Allow to dry.  Once dry, tap off  the excess glitter.

Step 16:  Glue small white brush trees into the scene as shown below.

Step 17:  Glue in the door slightly ajar and glue larger snowflakes to the clock as shown.

Step 18:  Tie a bow out of seam binding ribbon and glue to the top of the clock.  Glue three gold jingle bells to the center of the bow.  Glue an arrangement of winter flowers and other silvery foliage to the lower left corner of the clock and more gold jingle bells.

It's finished!  Below is a list of supplies that I used for my Winter Clock.

Supply List:

• Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Alarm Clock #D31A
• Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts House Ornament Kit #D172HD (front of house only)
• Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts House Ornament Window Trims #D172HW
• Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts Snowflake Shape Set #D38A
• Glue
• Black Paint
• Turquoise Blue Paint
• White Paint
• Crackle Accents
• Graphic 45 Winter Wonderland 12x12 Signature Page
• Embossing Ink Dauber
• White Glitter Embossing Powder
• White Glitter
• Art Glitter Dries White Glue
• Nuvo Embellishment Mouse, Platinum
• Small White Brush Trees
• Seam Binding Ribbon
• Small Gold Jingle Bells
• Flowers & Foliage

Thank you so much for following along with this tutorial and for following my tutorials for Gyspy Soul Laser Cuts over the past year.  Please visit my blog for more of my craft creations at:  www.sandytrefger.blogspot.com

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Crafting!

~Sandy