The Mirror Cracked
One of the last times I hit the thrift store I found a little wooden dollhouse for $1.99. It's about 18" x 5" with 2 rooms, and it had to of been painted by a little 5 year old. The dollhouse was painted in bright color of hot pink, turquoise and yellow with a red interior. How very cheery...
We all know those colors would never fly with me so I started thinking about how this house would fit in better here at Mockingbird Manor.
The dollhouse sat on my work table for a couple of months, until I finally figured out I wanted a dilapidated house. The type that makes one wonder if anyone lives in it or not? Perhaps there were things in it that at one time, quite grand, but now only a shadow of its former beauty. One might even think Miss Havisham would be seen walking by a window in her faded, worn wedding dress.
As we're having to do things differently at this crazy time in our world, I decided to do this project a differently as well. Instead of showing a complete finished project, I'm going to just show a part of it, as it's finished. Once everything is finished then I'll show the entire piece.
Loving the Arched Triptych with Overlay from Alpha Stamps, the smallest one (2x3) worked perfect for my tiny little house.
I'll be jumping right into techniques from here on out.
The triptych comes in 3 sections: the base, overlay and doors. Are they doors? Not sure but that's what I'm going to call them.
To attach the doors I used Hinge Tape, which is used to repair books, but awesome to have on hand for other projects. Masking tape would also work well to attach the doors from behind.
The front of the doors are covered with paper scraps that I had leftover from some old dictionary pages, that were painted with a Gelli Plate.
The base of the triptych is covered with a scrap from a vintage dictionary, and the broken "iron work" behind the overlay is cut from the Folding Screen Fretwork Insert. To make it look like a mirror was broken, I cut out jagged pieces from a faux mirror sheet and glued those behind the fretwork, then glued the overlay to the base.
The back wall was a lot easier than I thought it would be! The first layer of the crumbling wall is a piece of paper again from the Gelli Plate. Second layer is the Small Stone Wall Texture Sheet painted, and then glued down over the base paper. The third layer is just a torn piece of paper from the Time Is An Illusion Rust Effect sheet. To make the "crumbling stones" I used Golden Fiber Paste. The easiest way I found to do that was to use an old skinny paintbrush and drop a blob of the fiber paste onto the texture sheet. Smooth it around and pull up on it in different places with the paintbrush.
Once that was finished, I took a baby wipe and wipe off enough of the paste here and there so that the paint from the texture sheet shows through.
Lastly is the floor. The Wood Flooring Scrapbook Paper is double sided, light wood on one side and dark wood on the other. The dark wood was cut to size for the entire floor, then I tore another piece from the paper, gluing so the lighter side was on top.
To age the paper I used emory boards with different grits. A medium grit was used first, then I went over it again with a fine grit. I'll more than likely go back over the flooring with a sepia ink rubbed over the white spots to darken them up a bit. Tip: Get your emory boards at Sally's, way more economical than buying something like a Tim Holtz sanding block.
That's the first room! But exactly what kind of room is it? Is it completely finished, or will it remain the way it is? You'll just have to keep following to find out, or follow my Instagram page. ;)
