A Home Fit for Several Gnomes

I know it is September (aka Spooktember, when all the Halloween crafting happens) but an exception was made after receiving a Mushroom Niche Shrine with Arched Door and collage sheets filled with tiny gnomes from Alpha Stamps. I might have squealed a tiny bit. 

I say this every time a new Niche Shrine is announced, and it is always true, that this one is my absolute favorite. Mushrooms, gnomes, and shrines? Yes, please!

Shall we give a knock and see who's in? (I love that bitty door handle.)

What is going on in there?! Is this the party mushroom? 

Looks like Kerfoot is only interested in prepping potatoes for future batches of whatever's gotten the rest of them so happy.

Now, how exactly did eleventy-thousand gnomes cram into one mushroom house?

Oh-ho! The mushroom is a tunnel book! (A tiny one, but one nonetheless.) I have had an idea for a gnomish tunnel book for a while, so when the Mushroom Niche Shrine arrived it just seemed like the perfect opportunity to create it. 

Let's make a gnome home! 

What you see here are the front and back parts of the Mushroom Niche Shrine and the tunnel panels of the 4x4 Arch Tunnel Book. I placed the first tunnel panel on top of the mushroom front and traced around the opening to create a new doorway:

The top right is the mushroom front with the new door cut out. The mushroom front was placed on top of each of the tunnel panels, and I traced the curves of the stem along the top corners. Those got chopped off:

Next, paint the backs of the tunnel panels black (optional) then paper the fronts. I used the paper in the Mushroom House Kit; it's very gnome-y.

Next, cut two strips of paper  2 1/2" x 5 1/2". Make marks at 1" intervals on the long side. Flip paper over and make marks 1" apart beginning at 1/2". Using a bone folder, crease the paper at each mark, then flip the paper over again and crease those marks, too. Accordion fold the paper strip. Repeat for the other strip of paper. (Or use a scoreboard if you have one of those.) Cut the accordion piece at 3 1/2" then cut the remaining 2" section in half. Repeat with the other accordion piece. You will have two 3 1/2" accordion sections and four 1" pieces with folds. We'll call those shorter pieces "flaps".

In the above photo, I have added strips of double sided tape to the 1" flaps and attached them to the backs of the first and second tunnel panel. Ignore the other 1" flaps in that photo- those were spares.

Time to attach the two tunnel panels to the accordion folds - exciting! Remove the backing from the tape and attach the flap to the 3rd fold of the accordion. Here's another delightfully fuzzy photo for you so you can see exactly where those flaps go...

This photo is a bit better. Sort of. Well, the idea is the very first fold of the accordion will be glued to the back of the Mushroom front, the next fold has the first tunnel panel, followed by the second tunnel panel. The last fold will be attached to the third tunnel panel before the entire panel is glued to the Mushroom Shrine back. Since the third tunnel panel is glued to the mushroom back, no flaps were used on it.

Using the flaps to attach the panels makes tunnel book making so much easier in my opinion. The book can easily fold together if you choose to create a book that closes.

Moving on to the mushroom front! This part is super duper easy. I wanted a 3D effect and chose to use Creative Paperclay. To make certain the clay would stay put and not separate from the chipboard, I covered the mushroom with gesso followed by two coats of tacky glue. There was a slight amount of warping as the clay dried, but it was minimal. 

And we're shaping, la, la, la...

Done! It dried for two days before I painted it with acrylic paints. I also painted the back mushroom piece. 

For the door, I traced around the opening of the mushroom onto the brown paper. An additional 1/8" was added around the perimeter, the paper template was cut out, then traced onto a thin sheet of basswood. Cut out the shape and there's your door! Paint and decorate as desired.

To attach the door, first glue the hinges on the door. Place the door over the opening and apply more more paperclay around the sides and over the part of the hinge that's touching the mushroom. Let dry. Touch up the paint. 

And there you have it, a wee mushroom house fit for (at least) 10 gnomes.

Don't forget to make a tiny lawn for your new gnome home, complete with autumnal shrubs and a teensy planter! Oh, and see the light wood planters on both sides of the lawn? They're beads!

Cute!

Now it's time for more Hallowe'en crafting...yay! GO HERE to see a list of supplies used. Have fun!

A Tiny Tub of Whimsy!

A few days ago I got my hands on some adorable ceramic beads and a wee metal tub from Alpha Stamps - just what I needed for a super quick project. My kids and I have spent the last week tie dyeing everything, so I squeaked this in while their masterpieces were washing. 

How fun is that? A tiny tub of whimsy would brighten anyone's day, maybe even a Monday! The metal tub happened to be the perfect size for the beads I wanted to use, and the rest was filled in with loads of flowers and a petite path. 

What's up, squirrel?

Can you believe the squirrel, birdhouse, falcon, and gnome are ceramic beads?! Adorable! I think I said that already, but they truly are. The holes in the beads were really convenient; I pushed trimmed toothpicks in the holes before sticking them in the grass. 

I gathered some stuff that worked with what I was going for, like mini leaf punches, Bright Flowers Polymer Clay slice mix, green turf grass, florist foam (which I cut to fit inside the tub), and a handful of those cute ceramic beads. You can see where I stuck a toothpick through the bottom and then out the top of the birdhouse bead before placing the falcon on the bit of toothpick sticking out the top. A tiny fence along the front of the tub would be cute. Or painting the tub red with white polka dots. Or maybe line the inside rim of the tub with the plastic grass that comes with your grocery store sushi before adding the foam. I have lots of sushi grass...

I didn't do any of those things. What I did do (after cutting out a disk of floral foam for the inside of the tub) was cut several stems of florist wire, bent over the very end, then glued the polymer clay flowers on the stems. Leaves from the Ash Leaf Mini Punch were added to the stem, too. The floral foam was covered in glue and grass turf was sprinkled over the top. When it was dry, I stuffed the grassy foam inside the tub before adding the birdhouse, squirrel, and gnome beads. Then the flowers were stuck in here and there. Finally, the teeny rock path was added. And done! 

The supply list for this tiny 2" tub is RIGHT HERE.

Hope you are finding time to create as well! Tie dyeing is super fun...

Forest Gnomes Pop Up Book

When I first saw these Etched Wooden Arched Fairy Doors from Alpha Stamps, I thought about using them as book covers and attaching pages inside to make a little book of fairy recipes. But then I saw all of the new gnome themed collage sheets, like the Happy New Year and Gnome Home sheets,  and immediately changed my mind. Gnomes! Yay!

The pages inside were made using a Matchbox Ticket Journal. I distressed the front and back of the ticket journal and the backs of the fairy doors with brown inks for a uniform color.

On each of the pages is a rectangle of rice paper that was also aged, and I used various stamps on the pages using the same brown ink. 

Most of the pages also have a simple pop up image on them, made the same way as the ones in the Pop Up Alice in a Matchbox book. 

This little guy here; he's just too cute riding on a snail from the English Fairy Garden collage sheet! 

Instead of painting the doors, I decided to color them with watercolor pencils, mostly because the pencils were already on the craft table. They worked out well enough!

You can go HERE to see the list of supplies used. 

Happy New Year to you!