I have had an extremely busy week, inbetween work, running our nursery and the usual household stuff, making this Twiddleybitz Advent House. As I have found out the hard way, it's not a project for the faint hearted! I hope you like it.
The Advent House came as a kit which has been painted in Kaiser Olive paint and then assembled. This wasn't too hard, but there was a fair bit of gluing involved and heaps of pieces to slot together only to discover I'd painted the wrong side of the roof! Oh well, practice makes perfect! The hardest part was that each of the 24 boxes had to be cut out of card using the Twiddleybitz box template. It wasn't so hard, but it definitely took quite a few hours tracing each of those boxes, cutting them out, scoring the folds and assembling them. Let's say I watched the new Harry Potter movie twice as well as a few Doctor Who episodes while doing it!
Each of the boxes has been decorated individually. Most have been covered with Kaiser "Belle" paper. I decided to use a mixture of numbering styles so I've used Kaiser Rub-ons, Twiddley Bitz and Heidi Swapp Chipboard as well as stamps. Some of the chipboards have been painted with Making Memories paints while others were painted with Ranger Crackle Paints.
The roof top has been painted with Picket Fence crackle and then I've glued "snow" AKA Flowersoft Polar White along the edges and in patches over the roof. I know we don't have snow in Australia for Christmas and never where I live, but I couldn't resist for this house. The front of the roof has been painted over with Making Memories Red Glitter Glaze and the filigree has been painted with Ranger Pewter Crackle Paint. I really love the crackle paint. It's so easy to use and cracks beautifully!
The santa and sleigh are also from Twiddleybitz and have been painted with Making Memories paint and the Santa himself has been painted with Ranger Fired Brick Crackle Paint. This has been mounted with doublesided foam tape to lift it from the edge a bit. The Christmas Tree has been heat embossed with Christmas Tree embossing glitter and the Angel has been heat embossed with gold embossing powder. For the first time I used Ranger Embossing Stamp Pad to adhere the embossing powders to the images and I'm really impressed with how good it is. It stays really moist and sticky for ages after you've put it on so you don't have to rush to get the embossing powder on.
I will add that this has been the messiest project I have ever made! I had EVERYTHING out and all over my table - paints, rubons, chipboard, paper, embellishments, ribbon, etc. - and the flowersoft went all over the place. It absolutely refused to land on my mat and although I have a large Stampin' Up Embossing Tray, the house was too large for it. Overall it was fantastic to make, but I'm glad it's now done. I'm looking forward to doing something easier next week!
REMINDER: BLOG CANDY ends Tuesday 1st December (Australia Time) Don't forget to spread the word or leave a comment at the post below to be in the running!
Hehe... I'd like to bring to your attention that Christmas ended a month ago! You do realise if you ever mention my terrible blogging skills I will have no choice but to remind you of yours! Oh and before you say 'I haven't had time' remember that I used that excuse on more than one occassion and each time it was followed up with 'yeah but you should.....'. Oh... I love it when the tables turn!
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