It's starting to look like Halloween

I'm in a Halloween houses swap on ABC Yahoo Group. It was suggested by Kiram at Ponderings of a Mind, whose digital art I fell in love with at Christmas. You can see her entry on her blog. I know Patty and Marlynn will both love her house.

Kiram's idea was to have the house width 4 inches, like when we make our 4 X 4s. The house couldn't be more than 4 inches wide, but could be as tall as you chose, with a roof of your choice. My house is definitely not as spooky as some I've seen.


I still can't believe I spent over a week working on these. I started with a digital image of a woman with wings and an owl. Then I added a scanned pumpkin. Digital is hard! No getting around it, I would rather cut and paste using paper and scissors than Photoshop, but sometimes you just have to do it. Size can be so restrictive. For instance, I have a couple of die cut pumpkins left from some I made with my friend Kathy's die cutter a couple of years ago. But try as I might, these were too big and I didn't have enough for the number of houses I had to make. After a bit of trial and error (mostly error), I scanned them, then cut them to size. Next, I painted the backgrounds. I added the door, sewed the painted roof (a row (roll) of numbers I got at Dollar Tree), and punched the cat and crow I colored using some black paint. I didn't add the door knob and the focal image until the very end because both were dimensional.


Next, I cut the window using a punch. Gotta' admit, I used a lot of punches on this house. I sewed my information to the inside of the window, then added the cat, also a punch. Next I sewed on the corrugated cardboard roof, then sewed the house together.

The secret to the house was I used 12 X 12 white scrapbook paper that I colored using orange and black paint, then cut into 4 inch X 12 inch strips. I folded the strips in half widthwise then cut the roofs. It looks like Halloween has taken shape in my house (pun possibly intended as an afterthought).