Tiny Funky Floral Houses – Birthday Gift Idea Using Tim Holtz Tiny Houses Bigz Die

Wow I am so on a making roll this month, with all these birthdays I have no choice really but it’s been made so easy with these handy products I had in my stash!  This time I am making the gift to go with these notecards and this birthday card.  This was so much fun and I got to use some of these little die cut elements I had left over from another project – it pays to make a lot of elements because you never know when they might come in useful, plus they are really fun to make!

The Finished Tiny Houses

I made three little houses using the Tim Holtz Tiny House Bigz die.

Construction

This die cuts one side and one roof piece for the tiny house in two sizes in one pass, so as I wanted two of the smaller houses, I cut out the extra pieces and roof pieces. I used some mat board to die cut all the pieces for the tiny houses – one of the larger size and two of the smaller size tiny houses. The roof piece is the same piece for both houses so I needed three of those.  I also wanted to put a base on each house and for that I used roof pieces also.  They are very easy to put together using adhesive tape or glue, I prefer glue, but you do have to hold them while the glue dries.  They are tiny houses so finding some kind of clamp to hold them for you is a little difficult and I found it was just as easy to hold them with my fingers for the few minutes it takes for the glue to dry. Assemble the house pieces first, then add the roof, then add the base if you want one.

Decoration

I painted the tiny houses with white acrylic paint and left them to dry overnight, not that it needs that long to dry, but I was done for the night.  Next day, I played around with placement of some of the previously cut and painted funky florals and funky foliage elements and thought they looked really cute against the white houses.  I took a photo when I was happy with the placement BUT I hadn’t planned on making the houses white as it kind of made them look like they were not painted, just a primer or an undercoat.  So, I decided to paint them with some Linen Impasto paint from Finnabair.  I really love this colour, so much so that I have a backup tube of it so I never run out, but for some reason it did not look good on these little houses!  It was a big mistake and I really should have left them white!!!  Too late now though, and it would have taken at least two coats even of this very thick white paint/gesso to get them white again, so what to do?  I decided to paint them with a different colour but I wanted it to be something bright and happy and I wanted it to look good with the funky elements, especially the red in the toadstools. I pulled out some likely candidates and matched them against the elements, and in the end we had a winner – Dina Wakley Media Sky Blue.  This is such a bright blue, it was really gorgeous with the sun shining on it and will definitely brighten up anywhere my friend decides to display these tiny houses.

I arranged the funky floral and funky foliage pieces as per the photo I took for placement reference, and glued them all into position and left it all to dry overnight, yet again.

Finishing Touches

At this point I was done, but the next day I was thinking about the other side of the house and how it would be nice to give my friend another display option ie put something different on the other side and then she can choose which way she wants to have them.  Initially I thought about various text, sentiments, stamping, stickers, all kinds of things, but while that might have been ok for the bigger tiny house, the space for that on the smaller tiny houses was not much real estate at all.  In the end I decided to use another die, this time a Bigz by Tim Holtz called Heartfelt.  This is another favourite of mine as it is so useful and contains multiple hearts in various sizes.  I chose a couple that would fit on the houses, painted them with Candied Apple Distress Ink and then when they were dry, covered them with a coat of Glossy Accents.  This definitely needed to dry overnight as it was quite a thick coat and the last thing you want to happen at this stage is for it to smudge or get fingerprints on it!

Next day, I ended up just adding a few little, teeny tiny drops of glossy accents on some of the funky elements on the other side, to look like rain drops or dew drops, and called it done and ready to post.

This pink towel you see in the background came from one of my Craftelier orders which I happened to place during a summer sale promotion where the towel was added to your order while stocks last, and you were encouraged to share photos with the towel and the #craftelier hashtag, so that’s the story behind this pic.  I do like the little hearts so I’m happy that I gave my friend a choice.

I’m entering this project in the Country View Crafts August Challenge – the theme is TEXTURE. You can visit their blog here. 

PROJECT RECIPE:
White Gesso
Mat Board
Tim Holtz Funky Floral, Funky Foliage, Tiny Houses, Heartfelt dies
Finnabair Impasto paint – Linen (painted over)
Glossy  Accents
Distress Ink
Dina Wakley heavy body acrylic – Sky
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive