Blossoms and Bookpages Challenge - Blooming Storybook House

As you know sometimes I enter my craft projects in online craft challenges just to try to stretch my wings so to speak. Most of these projects are little houses, but sometimes I do change up what I make. This project is different for me. Of course, there is a house in the project, but it is only a part of the work.

This challenge is the Creative Carte Blanche challenge which is called Blossoms and Bookpages where you combine flowers and book pages, of course. I had recently found some cardboard packaging at work that I thought would make a nice background for a diorama or shadowbox. So it was added to the cardboard stash. I am a cardboard connoisseur and recognize good cardboard when I see it. I figured it would be perfect for this project.

That is the starting base for the project. I copied some pages from an old book called "Wild Flowers of the North Eastern States". The copyright is 1895, but I think my copy was printed in 1904. It's a lovely book and appropriate for this project. The pages were then decoupaged on the background after I reinforced the edges of the cardboard with cardboard strips.

I made a really cute little house out of scraps left over from other houses. It's only 3 inches wide and ½ inch deep. I painted the house with the cadmium yellow mixed with sand making the texture look like plaster. The windows are from various dies I have. The door is a punched out from the Tim Holtz Village dwelling, painted brown with a tiny brad as the doorknob. The roof is painted a phthalo blue. I made the hills with cutouts of the copied book pages stained various shades of green from the Ranger line of inks and paints. I painted the background with a light wash of white gesso to cover up the shine from the glue used on the paper, then painted a very light blue to simulate sky. I also painted some clouds with Picket Fence distress paint - probably not my best clouds.

The edge of the box was painted with ochre and burnt umber with a little blue mixed in (accidentally). The house and the hills were glued down, then the flowers bloomed on a vine- a little too exuberantly, I would say. I'm pretty sure from an artistic standpoint the flowers are a bit much. I was so happy to get to use my flowers that I went overboard.

I call this my "Blooming Storybook House". Relatively quick, fun, and happy project for me. You can see more Creative Carte Blanche projects on this link - July 2016 challenge.

I include the smaller photo below because often a non-cropped photo works best for a link-up to a challenge.

I hope you are having a happy, crafty summer.