Scottish Tower House, another go

I tried to make a tower house at Christmas, but it was a rush job and turned out pretty badly. It's been bothering me ever since, as I just knew I could make a better job of it.  So this weekend, when I really should have been catching up on housework and doing a proper supermarket shop, I sat down and made another.

Scottish tower houses are really little castles. There are quite a few of them around East Lothian (where I live) and many of them were until recently just ruins, four walls, no roof or floors. But over the last 20 years or so some lovely people have come along and rescued them.  I think it must be magical to live in one of these homes. Not too big and not too small, usually locatedk in an elevated position with a lovely view.  I can dream.

Anyway, my house is based on Tim Holtz Village Dwelling die, but I've made this into a 3 storey building using an extra layer of card at the base and building up 2 layers of houses, and added a circular stair tower with a turret. I also decided to make an enclosed courtyard at the back.   

I went over the walls with a very thin layer of DecoArts texture paste to look like the harling you find on these buildings, and then painted with American craft paints.

 The stonework, including the stairs and coping stones on the wall around the courtyard is all mmade from grunge board, I've used various colours of distress inks and pens to add colours on walls, roofs and in the courtyard.

I wanted to put some kind of decoration on the front of the building.  This is actually a plastic button that has been covered in gesso, painted to match the wall and embellished with a very tiny black and white coat of arms.

I'm glad I did another of these, I'm pretty pleased with this one.

Last one. Maybe

Okay, so my mantelpiece is just about full now, so I think this will have to be the last of the dwelling for now.  I should have been doing some Christmas shopping today, but got sidetracked into doing this little building.

Every village should have a fire station, just in case the Christmas turkey roasting gets out of hand. This one has a very old appliance that needs replacing but the brigade have been spending money on more managers and giving themselves higher salaries, whilst at the same time reducing the number of actual firefighters so they didn't have budget to replace it with a new engine.  Maybe next year.  

Every station has a tower. Mine is modelled on the one I see out of my office window, every working day as I work for the Fire Service. The first time the firefighters dropped their realistic training dummy over the parapet I nearly died of shock. Used to it now, but still a little unsettling when you catch it falling from the corner of your eye.

That silvery thing in the left corner (from prima marketing) is the extractor that takes exhaust fumes from the engine bay to the outside world.  You probably knew that already.

Christmas Shopping

My mantelpiece is filling up fast, but you can't have a village without a shop-come-postoffice, so that's what I've made this time. And another two storey dwelling, so the shopkeeper can live over the shop. I treated the top storey like I did the previous ones, covered the door area and made a window, but this window is the one I cut away from the lower storey, where the door now is ( more later...)

This one has a thatched roof, which is just white felt sprayed with Adirondack Espresso spray ink. I cut it slightly bigger all round than the roof pieces, then stuck the felt down and folded over the excess and stuck  that with ds tape. That gives the rounded profile you get on thatch, not a sharp edge.  Warning! If you try this yourself don't be fooled into thinking your felt is dry. I left mine for an hour, and gently waved a heat gun at it, but as I was sticking it down I found it was still pretty wet. Going to have brown fingers for a day or two!

I wanted to make a large bay window for this shop, so I made a little box sized to cover over both the window and the pre cut door. The window is acetate, and at the back is a snippet of Tim's seasonal stash papers which I stuck on after I had 'dressed' the window. There's a little shelf (folded card) for a tree to sit on, and the tinsel is also Tim's. I heated that with a heat gun to curl it up a bit as it was a bit too spiky.  The billboard above the window is also from the seasonal stash, as is the poster in the side of the building.

I needed to cut away the left hand window to make a door (and used this spare window on the top storey), and the door is also acetate with a little silver pen added. It's a bit modern for the building, and I'm now making up stories about the shop keeper having heated discussions with the town council planning department about it.  Sorry, it was 2.30am when I finished this house, after a bad day atvwork, and I think I was overtired.  Maybe I will make another door, but it depends on what the planning officer decides.

So here's pictures of the finished shop.  Must get on with Christmas shopping...

Every Good Village Needs a Pub.

The house building obsession continues...

Yesterday I made a modern 2 storey house for my village, and decided that a flat metal roof would suit it. This was achieved by cutting off the gables from the top storey. I ended up with half a window at each side of the building but, well, why not?  I made the a roof using card slightly wider and about half an inch deeper than the building, covering it with metal tape and then running it through my Bigshot using Tim's Rivited Metal embossing folder. I grunged it up by swiping it with white paint (picket fence), and rubbing most of that off to give a zinc look, not too shiny.  Then I rubbed a little black paint into the rivets to age it a bit.   I curled then front and back edges over so it looked a bit quirky and modern.

To match the metal roof, I outlined the windows in a silver pen and made a metal door.

My village is coming along nicely, but every good village needs a decent pub, and preferably one with a bit of history, oak beams and a roaring log fire to welcome you in on a snowy day.  So I made one...

I started by making up the walls of 2 dwellings and sticking them together. As I didn't need 2 doors,  I removed the one on the right, then I cut a strip of card and punched another window in it using the movers and shapers small window die (forgot what it is called, sorry) and stuck this where the door had been. I outlined all the windows with black pen.

I then made up a third building, painted it black and used a pen to mark 'weatherboard cladding' on it.

I removed the door and made a window embrasure (3 layers of card) to cover up the hole, and gave all the windows the leaded pane treatment 

This became the upper storey for one side of the pub but I left the other side as a single storey.  The roof of the single storey building had to have small sliver cut from the left hand edge because there would be no overhang at this side. And you will see that the roofline has a definite lean, but it's a very old building (built 1588 according to the sign) so that's okay. :-)

My pub needed a name, and because it looked kind of like a smugglers den by the sea, I called it 

The 3 Ships (and it is for Christmas) painted a little sign for the front of the building, and gave it a big, studded Andy old black oak door.

Oh look, it's opening time. Mine's a G&T, thanks.

A New Housing Scheme IMBY. Or on my mantelpiece.

I'd fallen in lust with Tim's Village Dwelling die and so I bought some of the die cuts (along with village winter and bell tower kits) from eBay thinking that I'd get over it after I'd made a few.

Nope. Made me worse.

These are ones I made using the eBay die cuts.

The die cuts were originally white card, so I painted them with Ranger Adirondack acrylic paints dabbers in Eggplant and Stream. Very Scandi, love these colours and they look fab with my wallpaper!

I'm now totally obsessed with making these little houses, and after making them and still lusting for more I went and bought the die. These are like gold dust, mas soon as they go in stock with retailers they sell out within hours, but I was lucky and got one. I think the fact I was online at 6.45am was a clincher, as they had all gone a few hours later.

So, first up when I got the die yesterday I made a little cabin, like Tim's.

Tim's video is here

http://youtu.be/KV--DY2pj4g

I can't wait for the new accessory dies that Tim says will come out next year. YAY!k

I shamelessly copied this cabin as soon as I got my die, and used the same corrugated surface and techniques. The only difference is I used a wee vintage plastic deer instead of a tree as decoration.

That was last night.

My brain did not switch off even though I had put the glue gun away and was away to bed. In the middle of the night I woke up with an idea of trying to make a 2 storey Tudor black and white house. I just hate that I've got to go to work for a living, and have been itching to give this a try all day.  But it turned out splendidly

I forgot to take any photos because I was so keen to get on.  But basically what I did was to cut 2 dwellings out, then glued the walls up as per normal for the 'ground floor'. The upper floor was glued together leaving just a little of the side tabs uncovered, so that it was slightly bigger and could slip over the ground floor. I stuck it down so that the side windows of the ground floor building where hidden, but had to cut away part of the gable end on this one so that you couldn't see it through the new upper floor window,  difficult to explain, but if you try this you will see what to do, it's quite simple.  

Once the buildings are stuck together, I then had to cover up the door on the top floor dwelling. This was a simple job, just a piece of card from the point of the eaves to the bottom of the first floor.  If I do this house again  I might put another layer on to give a more defined step in the building as it would look more interesting.

This picture is before I put the roof on or Windows on.w.

I added a rectangular 'black oak' door with 'rusty ironwork', instead of a rounded door as this was more like a Tudor design.  I used a piece of black cardstock land a blueprint embossing folder to get the iron bits that I then highlighted with a red metalic krylon pen. I made the door longer so it reaches the 'ground' so didn't need to use the step.

You can also see that I made 'leaded glass' for the Windows, simple lines on small pieces of acrylic sheeting using a permanent ink pen, then glued in place.

The fun part of this house was putting in the black lines.  It's a Tudor house, Tudor houses are wonky, so it doesn't matter if lines are wonky too.  I had a look on the Internet for images of black and white houses for inspiration and just had a go freehand with a black soot distress pen. I think it looks great,

I added a tiny little window high up on the front of the house, made of a couple of squares of card layered together (for a bit of depth), then cut a square out of the middle and added another pane of 'glass' before sticking it down as a window under the eaves.

The roof is black cardstock, but I used a soft lead pencil to give the impression of slates.  The porch overhang was too big for this house so I cut it down so it didn't stick out much more than the roofline, as in this picture.  I rolled up 4 black paper strips to make tall chimnies, and stuck them in the pot on the roof asTudor buildings usually have very tall chimnies!

So, that's about it, apart from my vintage Santa cake decoration, which looks just right I think.  

Tomorrow I will try a modern two storey house, maybe with a flat roof.