Friday, December 17, 2010

Little Snowy House Ornament and Tutorial

Little Snowy House Ornament
acrylic paint, glitter glue, sharpie marker, upcycled menus (cardstock), thread.

Hi! I'm a little snowy house.

Here is my tutorial.
First sketch out the design. This is an easy design. All walls and floors are one inch squares. The triangles for the peak were drawn to fit into the spare scrap paper, so are about 1/2" high but were eyeballed, probably not the best idea. Then I measured the peaks along the diagonal to figure out the length for the roof sides. Tabs for glue are eyeballed and drawn in.
Cut out the drawing.
Score along the pencil lines where I will be folded. (note: do not score the line below between the triangle and square... that line will NOT be folded. In fact, erase it before you start to avoid confusion, so you are left with a house shaped side, rather than a triangle on top of a square.)
Crease along the scores and put glue on the tabs. I am glued w glue stick, but a different type of glue might be stronger.
Fold edges and press glued tabs into their appropriate sides. The last wall is the most difficult. A thin blade or needle might help to press the glue. Muddle through as best as you can.
Uh oh. It turns out all the eyeballing did not make for a very tight fitting house. I should have measure the peaks. Oh well. I guess I'll have to figure out a solution.
Voila! Little house gets a glue and sparkle joint fill. Not by coincidence, it looks like a snowy roof. Yay glitter glue! I continue and outline the roof along the joints, and then flood the outline with the glitter glue. Like frosting a cookie.

Here it is with the snow roof and a red door. In the background, you can see the supplies of glitter glue and glue stick. I should have painted this little house before adding the glitter glue, but glitter glue makes me excited and I jumped the gun.

Oh yeah, little house is resting on my original sketch, when I was trying to figure out the engineering for a house shaped paper box. Floor, walls, peaks, roof tops. I eyeball things usually, and make them up as I go along. And figure out fixes for my imprecision, which is why I don't often do tutorials. But hey, why not include that in a tutorial.
And here is the finished little house, after the glue dried over night. It took a while. And then I forgot to show my process... but it's not that complicated. I got out some naples yellow acrylic paint (Golden fluid acrylic) and painted the walls around the glue. Then when it dried, I drew in the windows. Then I went back over it and painted in the window panes in white acrylic.

To string it up, I threaded a needle through the roof, right through the top. I think it would look better with ribbon, but I didn't have any I liked, so added a yarn bow to attach it to the tree.

It would have been cute if I had made a chimney and had the yard coming out of it like smoke, but just adding that little detail would have made this little house a much more complicated undertaking. Thus... simple little house. With snow

And thus I have given you my tutorial. And pardon for the fuzzy pictures. My own little house is covered with snow, which blocks the skylights that I usually depend upon for lighting.

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