The Scrapbook Garden , Tando House

This little house was in my design kit for the Scrapbook Garden, its so cute. Ive spent the last few days putting it together

It comes all flat packed as a little kit and you can find it online at the Scrapbook Garden here

I wasnt quite sure how to decorate it but hunted out some ideas around blogland and also at Tando and came across quite a clever idea

It was to cut 2 square pieces out of the 2 side panels and make space for a pull out photo collection in each side.

The chipboard is excellent quality and I drew out the piece to be cut out with a pencil and ruler as I found it had to be cut slowly so as not to make the cuts uneven.


I ended up with my 2 side panels as shown below

There are grooves cut in the chipboard so the main body of the house just simply slots together

quite quickly and with ease. However its a snug fit , and theres no need to use any glue at this stage.

As ive found with other chipboard pieces it can be quite pourus, so not wanting to lose any colour from which ever medium I decided to use I thought it best to give the whole house inside and out a coat of Gesso, this sealed the chipboard and also gave me a nice white base to work with

This needed to dry overnight just to be sure , although it was touch dry quite quickly.

I decided to use acrylic paints thinking they might be a bit more hardwearing, as unlike scrapbook pages that are in albums and covered this was going to be standing out on a surface and could get dust

I decided on a delicate shade of pink for the main part of the house which I thought looked a bit like a little cottage dolls house that my daughter once had with a bright red roof

So then came next....the bright red roof. I added a touch of black ink to the edges of the roof just to finish it off a bit better

The chimney went together in the same way, 4 sections which slotted together without the need for any glue.

I remembered I had some brick effect paper and it seemed ideal for the effect on the chimney pot

Covering the chipboard with the paper made no difference to it slotting together so using paper to cover the main part of the house would have been an option also.


 

My house needed a door , so I set too and cut a door shape out of some spare chipboard just slightly bigger than the opening on the front of the house.

I then sliced through the door and created the effect of weeden planks , I painted them and edged each one all the way round with black ink to creat depth in the door. I added a number 16 as this was the number of my childhood house

I added a brad to act as a door handle

I cut a panel of chipboard to fit within the centre of the main body of the house and covered both sides of it with a contrasting paper.

I also did the same for the base.

I attached the house to the base using Glossy accents

this is a good strong glue and as the edges of the base were very narrow I needed something that would hold strong and fast

Next I glued the sides and the base of the middle panel and eased that into place also/

I cut 2 lengths of co ordinating paper , scored it with my paper folder and folded it up concertina style. The two piece that had been cut from the side panels at the beginning had one side painted with gesso and then the acrylic paint and the other side covered with the co ordinating paper to match the centre panel

Next I took some black acrylic and painted in the window frames to give the windows some depth, this is where I found out I didnt have a very steady hand lol

Turning to the rear of the house , on the example I was following they had attached a chipboard tree which looked great, however I didnt have one of those but I did have this rubber stamped street lamp which was a perfect size. I also found a garden fence , so I added some flowers and the cute little watering can.

On each end of the folded paper I added some double sided tape , attaching it to the centre panel and also to the piece that I had cut from the side panel at the beginning.

All this needs to be done before you attach the roof as you need to be able to get to the inside and this is the only way you can do this

Next using the gloosy accents once again I added the roof and the chimney pot.

Afterwards I added another contrasting paper to the folded paper , a harlequin design, it is to these squares I will add my images , pictures of my children and grandchildren.

It had been my intention to maybe add some embossing to the roof to give it some texture , but I feel this would have been better done before I had attached the roof , as once again the edges that were to be glued were very narrow

I painted the under side of the roof also as you can see theres a slight over hang.

I added a little pot of flowers by the front door to make it look more homely. Again if you wanted to add any embossing to the front panel around the door maybe I would advise doing it while the panels were still flat

And thats it , one little house. I did add to the length of time by adapting the side panels but I wanted more to it than just the little house as once the roof is on you cant get inside.

Theres a bird house in the same range too which i think would look fab as decoration inside a conservatory maybe, you can find it here

I found it did take some time and patience to complete but it was worth it in the end and as I said I added to the time frame because I had altered it, without the modifications I would have been finished alot sooner.

Thank you for stopping by my blog and for leaving a comment its much appriciated.

Have a peep at the range of chipboard over at the Scrapbook Garden its so reasonably priced its a bargain.