5. The Witch's (Bird) House

Hello again. Hope you enjoyed Lou's wonderful journal covers yesterday. Funnily enough, I was working on a similar project myself but I like Lou's better.

So, today I have this to show you. It's a little bird house decorated as a witch's house. Thought it might be cute to hang outside and freak out the neighbours!

The house decoration is made using embossing folders, but there is no reason why you couldn't do the same with stamping if you don't have embossing folders.

Here's how I made mine. First, I found this plain birdhouse in my local craft store. Perfect for altering.

My advice would be to paint the edges and awkward bits. Much easier than trying to cover them with paper.

I then used a Tim Holtz woodgrain embossing folder to emboss some brown card. Cut into rough strips and inked to highlight the embossing. The strips are different widths and lengths - the look you're gong for is old tatty wooden shack. Much easier than precise cutting too.

Now, here is where I forgot to take more photos. Doh! Basically, all you need to do is cover the sides of the house with these strips, overlapping as necessary and please be a bit haphazard as you don't want it looking too neat.

I added a door at the back - this was another embossing folder with a spooky graveyard image. Inked again and just rough cut into a wonky door shape, surrounded by some inked strips of grey card. I also added some windows to the side, using a cracked glass embossing folder over acetate, again surrounded by inked grey card for the window frames.

The roof is covered with a spider web embossed card, again inked to highlight the embossing. As this is square it is much easier to cover in one piece.

I covered the door in glossy accents (it's not quite dry on the photo above) and the roof, base and door/window frames with crackle accents.

Finally, add whatever little decorations you like. I had a miniature black cat charm next to the door, a plastic spider on the roof and a couple of little pumpkins made from cape gooseberries with hand drawn faces on them. I think they're cape gooseberries - they look like it, but they are just growing in my garden and I'm not much of a gardener so I'm not sure!

Have fun, and see you tomorrow for Jas's wonderful project.