Girl with a Curl: Home Sweet Home for a Ghost!

Hi there,

today I have the cutest little 3D item to show you. They were (yes there are three of them!) made using the new Home Sweet Home Thinlets Dies from Stampin' Up.

Aren't they just adorable or what?

Before I go any further I was inspired by this great post and video over at the Simon Says Blog. Click HERE to see what I'm talking about, you will be amazed. Now I don't have the Tim Holtz Village dies so I couldn't re-create it nor do I have any of the distress inks or texture paste or anything that Shari used in the video. What's a girl to do when faced with this dilemma? Buy all the stuff or see what I had that I could use? Seeing as I had not long purchased the Home Sweet Home Thinlets Dies and hadn't used them my dilemma was sort of solved.

My first house was the experimental house, you know the one where you try different stuff and see what works and what does not....yes there was quite a bit of does not lol.

I used Basic Grey CS for the house, Black CS for the window and door trims as well as the roof, all from Stampin' Up. Once I had run all the dies with the paper through the Big Shot and cut out all the pieces I would need, I set about "oldenizing" ( yes it's a word it means grunging up lol) my house.

To do this I found in my stamp stash a very old grungy background stamp from Kaisercraft (I have had it for so long I don't know the name of it sorry). I stamped all over the walls of the house pieces using Old Olive, Basic Grey and Black ink from Stampin' Up to give it a mottled, crumbling & really old look. I then attached all the trims around the windows and doors with glue. I attached the roof I had cut out of black CS. For the door I cut another small piece of the grey CS and stamped it with the Hardwood background stamp from Stampin' Up in black and attached a small brad from my stash & glued it on top of the existing door. It looked great so far but it was missing something. I found some medical gauze I had in my craft stash from years gone by.... I think it was from when I tried my hand at shabby chic crafting - something I am not good at and avoid at all costs!

Anywhoo back to the gauze, I stamped it with black and silver ink and then artistically draped it over part of the roof and around the doors and windows.....faux cobwebs anyone?

I was quite chuffed at this stage with my haunted house so I decided to make two more. I mean why not right? I had out all the stuff, my fingers were already covered in ink I may as well. When it came to the roof this time I thought it looked too new....mmmm how could I grunge up black CS? Black ink wouldn't really show up unless I heat embossed it....mmmm light bulb moment was when I had a go at stamping it with that grungy back ground stamp using silver ink. Eureka it looked like it had lichen growing on the shingled roof.

You can just sort of see it in the photo below. It was really hard to photograph the houses to show up the details properly with the natural light available ( it was quite overcast here at the time). They look so much better in real life.