The Old Folly

Out in the countryside far away from the noise of the village, nestled in it's own copse of woods is a very large, very grand house. It's been quite a while since the old girl had a butler to open her doors and housemaids scurrying about and a red cheeked cook.
But still, she's a beautiful, if a bit shabby house and is well loved by the family that lives there.
There is no gardener, but the flowers and lawns are cared for as best the family can.
In the copse of woods (the 21st century children of the house have named Follywood) lies, you guessed it, an old folly. Like the big house, it's a bit shabby and a little overgrown but still beautiful. The children love to play there, but there is always an element of awareness to their play. A spicy ingredient of feeling they are being watched. They never see anyone, never feel frightened, but it's a fact that the children never question, having absorbed it into the everyday imaginings of their pretendings and play acting.

The Folly remains empty, yet it always feels as if someone has just left.

Once in a while late at night, one child will wake the others and they silently watch the light that gently shines from the wood. It's friendly, gauzy warmth embraces them until they begin to feel quite drowsy and stumble back to their beds.
Morning brings sunshine and adventure and the magic moment of the night before is dismissed for a pirate theater and frog catching in the pond.

If they'd followed the friendly light into the wood they might have seen that it was shining through the shingles of the roof.

Looks like someone has a comfy little hiding place where they stash their books and read into the night. Fairy tales, a lamp and a cushy stool to sit on. Perhaps a child of another sort likes the Folly for the same reason the others do? Maybe the big old house is home to more than meets the eye!

A Brief Summation of Parts and Details

The basic structure of this folly is from a kit from the awesome folks at Alpha Stamps.
After a dry fit of the basic box, and before I permanently assembled it, I pre-cut the interior and exterior papers, taking into consideration the flangey bits that need to be left bare in order for the walls to fit into each other properly.

I used matte medium and attached all the papers inside and out and painted the inside walls and ceiling.

At the last minute I decided I wanted the front to have a door, so I cut off the flanges on the piece that I chose as the door, and the flanges on the two side pieces on the panels that butt up to the door. I used linen book binding tape as a hinge on the inside of the door. I'm so sorry I didn't get a photograph of this part of the process. It wasn't a planned maneuver and I was in the moment.

I also decided that the windows needed awnings and trim. (I did take pictures of this after kicking myself about the door!)
I made a template using graph paper of the shape I wanted the awnings to be and cut them out.

The paper awnings wouldn't have been very sturdy just glued directly on to the window arch, so I cut some thin strips of heavy weight chip board, gently bent them to shape and glued them on the window arches. This gave the awnings a good base to stick to.

After everything dried, I added some more chip board strips to finsh out the molding on the windows, cut out and glued some wooden doll house trim under the windows and primed and painted all the window trim.

I glued all the parts together and began added Dresden Trim to the windows to disguise the chip board and trimmed out the base of the folly and the shingled roof.
(the shingles come in strips and they're dead easy to apply. You can get them HERE )
After making sure there were no gaps in the corner joins (I filled any there were with wood putty) I painted everything that need touching up inclued all the Dresden trim and then aged the piece using acrylic paints.
This was the result before I started adding the flora.

Then it was a matter of bending and gluing lots of pretty rose vines and moss in the spots that pleased me.

SUPPLIES
For a link to the supplies from Alpha Stamps click HERE.

List
Fortune Teller Booth
Pineapple Finial
Mansard Roof for Fortune Teller's Booth
Pink Rose Garland
Fern Garland
Sheet Moss
Frolic Adorn Scrapbook Paper
Mini Adhesive Rosette Trim-Ivory
Little Library Collage Sheet
Miniature Hurricane Lamp
Baroque Dresden Borders-Black


Additional Supplies
Acrylic paint
1/24 scale diamond shingles

Thank you so much for stopping by!

UPDATE: WE HAVE A WINNER!! smokeysmom, drop me an email, please and thank you! GIVEAWAY!!

I'm giving away this cute little house!
Just join the site and you'll be in the running. If you are already a member, just make a comment and you'll be included in the drawing.

It's a tiny house, about 4.5 inches tall and has a little 'floating' phrase on the inside.

I'll announce the winner on Thursday, March 10th.
Thanks for stopping by!

Salvage

I was lucky enough to be asked if I was interested in looking through an old theater company's bits and pieces before it was all hauled away to a scrap yard.
I wasn't the only one there, so pickings were slim, but I found these beauties!
My idea is to incorporate them into my new studio somehow.

I'm in love with the green pediment and think maybe over the center of the built-in book cases MacGyver is building. Maybe...things do evolve. Too short for over the French doors, dang it.

Not sure about what to do with the 'sun ray' piece or the rainbow arch underneath it. They are both made of foam, are super light weight and can be painted to look like anything. Anybody got any ideas?

Just the beginning....

Feast your eyes on my new studio!

Well, my future studio. We have a long way to go, but I'll be keeping you posted and may be asking now and then for a little feedback on some design choices. This is the view leading back up to the first floor...you can see the staircase to the left and a hallway on the right.

This is the view standing by the staircase. There will be double French doors replacing the existing door, which leads out to a pretty terrace and a lovely view of our enchanted wood. 

The room is 27x17 and will be where I do most everything but jewelry. It's also going to be where classes are held and little art shows of my work and students as well.

The wide corridor to the right of the staircase will have a counter top and a hood vent where my kiln will live and the counter top will also be where any pyrography or anything smokey or fume inducing will be done since the venting will be good.

The doorway that you can see down the hall is a gutted half bath which will be (hopefully) transformed into a little jewel of a bathroom.
To the right of the staircase is another doorway leading to a really large room where the laundry is. It's also where my jewelry bench lives and is a home for the 2000-plus board feet of black walnut my husband is building things from. Including a fabulous 4 foot by 8 foot table I'll be using for teaching and making really big things on.

It's so exciting to begin this project...... I envision much laughter and creativity happening here!
I'll keep you posted!
Thanks for stopping by.
Lora

 

A little street of Cotswold Cottages

An old English village is such charming place to take a walk in. Most of the buildings, including the houses are built from the stone available nearby and although they all have that commonality, so many are quirky and individual, reflecting the personalities of the folks that live in them.

Let's just pretend we are strolling down a little lane, taking in the soft morning sunshine, the mellow stone, lacy curtains.
Maybe the smell of breakfast is drifting by.....
We know at least one household will have fresh eggs!

And look....if you peer hard enough through the windows....they've all got little messages inside! Well, you have to turn them around, but we are playing with wee houses and pretending.

Very nearly all the supplies came from the wonderful Alpha Stamps including the 'thatch' on the roof of this little cottage.
The houses themselves are little Mini House Shadowboxes in four different sizes and they are adorable.
The papers I used are from the Provincial 6x6 Paper Pad including the little messages, which are cute tags at the back of the pad.

Looks like somebody artsy might live in this one with it's swirly door and unusual roof shingles.

And speaking of shingles.......

The roofs on these houses are as individual as the the facades!
I used some doll house shingles on a couple of them, the letter roof came from chipboard Alpha Tiles
and the thatch is Sheet Moss I glued down with my fav glue Aleene's Fast Grab Tacky Glue. Love that stuff.
I used scraps of Dresden Trim for trimming out the gable ends of the cottages and white acrylic paint went a long way for adding charming little dot details that made things pop.

I wanted the little message tags to look like they were floating, so after embellishing them, I mounted them on some wood scraps I had and glued them above the 'floor' of the cottage so it looks like they are suspended in air.

For a supplies list from Alpha Stamps click HERE.

Supplies:
Mini House Shadowboxes (no.'s 1, 2, 3, 4,)
House Jewelry Pieces
Decorative Window Set (1/24)
Windows 4 Panel Rectangular
Provincial 6x6 Paper Pad
Thin Looped Dresden Borders (painted white or brown)
7mm Flower washer 
Sheet Moss
Alpha Tiles
Copic markers (pumpkin yellow, salad, golden yellow)

Additional:
Acrylic paint
Matte Medium
Tiny scraps of G45 In the Garden and Country French Papers (window birdcage and sunflowers, chicken on the roof and the roof border on the orange house)
Scraps of old rub-ons from Basic Grey
Shingles from doll house section of Michael's

Thanks for stopping by!

You better watch out.........

You better not cry, you better not pout, I'm tellin' you why....

Krampus could be coming to your house to whack the crap out of you with a bunch of birch branches, give you nightmares for a year or, if the horror stories are accurate, spirit you away in his big black sack and eat you alive.

Pretty cheerful Christmas legend!
This is kind of what I picture him riding around in. Kind of the anti-Santa's sleigh...all dark and sooty with horns that he shed from the previous year mounted on the back of his great big chair, his sack-o-children and birch branches tossed in the back.

Krampus has only just started his rounds so his sleigh is all tidy and clean. I imagine that toward the end of the night it's looking pretty grotty and run down.

You can see a little hand sticking out of his bag. Hmmm....
And his old horns are starting to look a little rotten already.
All you really nasty kids (you know who you are!!) better start being very sorry for all the bad things you've done all year.

The best you can hope for is getting the stuffing scared out of you seeing hairy, mean old Krampus waving that big stick around.
The worse I'll leave up to your imagination....but if I were you, I would try really hard not to think about that big black sack!

This was a pretty straight forward project. I assembled the Chipboard Sleigh (Tabletop) all but the outer sleigh railings which I set aside. I painted everything black, including the outer railings, let it dry completely, and cut and fitted my red paper. You can use any paper you like...I just liked the sooty quality of the red paper. It sort of looks like a cast-off Santa sleigh to me.
I glued the paper on and let it dry.

I painted the pieces of the Arch Top Reliquary black and glued my paper on the back piece of the reliquary and then glued the frame over it.




The base of the chair is a little wooden scrap I had kicking around that I padded with a piece of jewelry box padding and covered with black fabric.

I made polymer clay horns and two arm rests for the chair and glued them on after I painted them.

I made a black sack by folding over a piece of fabric and gluing (you probably noticed by now that I don't sew) up the seam.
I turned it inside out and voila, a sack.

I stuffed tissue in the bottom to poof it out and added my little, erm, touches to it. I admit, I had a doll arm kicking around too.

I bent up a piece of black electrical wire and glued it inside the sleigh and hung a lantern on it. Krampus doesn't have a fancy Rudolph to light his way, so he's got to do it the old fashioned way.
Maybe that makes him even more grumpy.
I imagine he's got something less glamorous pulling his sleigh like yaks or water buffalo.
Or maybe something far less substantial like a couple of night mares......



SUPPLIES LIST From Alpha Stamps

Chipboard Sleigh-Tabletop
Lantern
Arch Top Reliquary-Single
Weekend Market Around The World Scrapbook Paper
Bronze Fancy Filigree Set

Additional bits:
The red paper I used was called Distressed Couture Vines from Glitz
Polymer clay
Black Wire
Black acrylic paint
White acrylic paint
Quinacrodone Nickel Azo Gold Acrylic paint
Black fabric Twine
Dolls arm
Sticks from my back garden

Thank you for stopping by!