Firendship at Anything But Cute

Hello Friends!

At Anything But Cute this month our Challenge #17 is hosted by the fabulous Branka who has chosen Friendship as her theme. Here is what Branka had to say...

'Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between two or more people.  We want you to show us a mixed media creation that's inspired by friendship.  You can create anything, from tags to art journal pages but make sure it's a mixed media piece.  Let's celebrate friendship together!'

Hmm, what has this project got to do with friendship?  

My lovely friend Sandy (of Simply Sandy) in the USA and I have been blog friends for a few years now and we love to send cards/projects/gifts to each other.  Sandy very kindly sent me the new Tim Holtz Village Manor die (how lucky am I!) and since we share a love of all things Halloween, I have made this little scene to send back to her, as a special thank you for sending me this wonderful die... I do hope she likes it!

I got a bit carried away making the haunted Village Manor but I do have a few step by steps to share with you.

I used three dies to complete the Manor, the Village Dwelling (660992), Village Rooftops (661197) and the Village Manor (661591).

I die cut all the pieces I needed, from heavy black cardstock (480 gsm) and applied Tim Holtz Grit Paste, (through a brick stencil) to the bottom part of the house only and left this to dry.

After applying the Grit Paste to the lower part of the Manor I decided I would like to 'render' the top half and I wanted it to have a grey, aged appearance so I added some Distress Paint and Distress Re-Inker in grey tones.

The coloured Grit Paste was dabbed on with a sponge to give an uneven appearance.  This is where I got a bit carried away and forgot to take photos but here you can see that I built the little 'attic' part, added the windows, front door and roof to the bottom part and also constructed the two chimneys (adding some Industrious Stickers to finish them off).  The attic part was painted with IndigoBlu Raven Black Metallic Paint, which gives a lovely sheen.

The roof was cut from Tim Holtz patterned paper, using the Rooftop die.  Once constructed I roughed up the edges and wiped over them with Hickory Smoke Distress Ink.

To create the base for the house to stand on I used a piece of thick foam board that I embossed with a stone wall type embossing folder.  This was painted in various tones of Distress Paint  to give the appearance of 'aged stone'.

To create the front 'path' I used pieces that were left over from the fence and glued these to a piece of white card.  Once dry I applied a watered down coat of Hickory Smoke Distress Paint.

To finish off I used Tim's Ghosts die, cut with Shrink Plastic and shrunk down to go in the chimney and in the graveyard.  The graveyard was filled with tombstones cut from Tim's On the Edge Graveyard die.  The tree is Tim's Scary Tree die and the pumpkin, bats, cat and children are from Tim's Halloween Shadows strip die.  The greenery is florist moss.

 I added some Fantasy Film to the windows and used some offcuts from the fence to decorate the front door.  The door knobs are seed beads. The piece at the front of the roof over the porch is an offcut from the Manor die, I thought it looked good over the porch and it fitted perfectly - a happy accident!

A close-up of the finished house.  To give you a sense of the scale, it measures 6" tall and 3" across at the widest point, so it is quite dinky!  

One final overhead shot.

It is very easy to construct and I can already imagine many different ways to use the dies - I am already constructing more, which you will no doubt see in due course!  This one is winging its way to Florida to my lovely friend Sandy!

It would be lovely to see you join in with us at Anything But Cute, we would love to see how you interpret and celebrate Friendship!  You can see what my talented teamies have made HERE.

I am adding this to my dear friend Darnell's NBUS challenge HERE.  My NBUS is my Manor House die and also the stone embossing folder.

As always, thanks so much for your visit!  Anne xx