Haunted Holtzville – First House of the Halloween Village Dwelling Series

Finally, I have one of the Haunted Holtzville houses done. This one is the Village Brownstone altered as a Halloween house. I am making a little village – Holtzville – really, Haunted Holtzville, with the Village dwelling dies. I am eagerly awaiting the Village Manor to complete the village. 

My plan was to unveil the entire village together but today’s challenge on the Wednesday Simon Says Stamp challenge is “Make for the Border” and since the fence as a border to this piece is fits perfectly with the challenge (in my mind, anyway) I decided to go ahead and post it. 

The basic house die is the Village Brownstone. I altered it by making 2 back pieces so I could make a different, less ornate door. Then I made rough sawn plank siding with the Tim Holtz torn notebook die and painted the pieces with black gesso covered with Picket Fence crackle paint. The edges of the planks were distressed with Black Soot distress paint. 

The roof is the Village rooftop die that looks like shakes. I love this die. I edged these shakes with some Picket Fence distress paint after painting them black with black gesso. It gives them a more spooky dimension.

The fence – the border,rather – is the Tim Holtz On the Fence edge die. It is made of 2 layers of cardboard glued together and distressed with Ground Espresso and Black soot. I made a gate using a section of the fence and cut out 2 cross pieces to look more “gate like”. I put 2 cardboard strips behind the gate section to make it stick out beyond the fence. 

The base is just cardboard built up in layers so the ground looks uneven. I painted it with an ochre paint and distressed with Black Soot and Ground Espresso distress paints. The leaves are from Tim Holtz Sizzix punches along with a few other miscellaneous leaf punches. I made the pumpkins from sculpey, but now Tim Holtz has come out with some Ideology pumpkins which came out after I was making the Haunted Holtzville Village.

The tree is one of my standard trees in the background – the Tim Holtz Branch Tree which is retired, I think. You can still get it online though on Amazon or Ebay. You can substitute the Sizzix Bigz Bird Branch as a tree. I’m going to do that on one of the other houses. You can see an example of the branch as a tree on my Red, White, and Bluebird Clock house. I love the little owl from the Sizzix Halloween shadows die. I wish they would make the owl and what I call the “mouthy pumpkin” into a punch because I use them so much.

I tried to use all Tim Holtz products for Haunted Holtzville which really wasn’t a challenge because there are so many cool things in his product line for Halloween houses.

I hope you enjoyed the introduction to Haunted Holtzville. More to come.