Home Sweet Home {by JOFY designer Jo Firth-Young}

Hi everyone, Jo here with my monthly project... and this month its three for the price of one!  I like to make triptychs in one format or another - and this month its a street of 3 little houses... a mini housing development JoFY stylee.

The houses are decorated using JOFY images 'old' and new, showing how easy it is to use all the stamps sets together... and coloured with Fresco Finish paints including the new JOFY Limited Edition colours.

The houses started off as frames bought in the sale at a high street shop (went in for clothes came out with future art/craft projects - sound familiar to any of you?), they came as a set of four but for reasons given above I chose to use only 3 (but don't worry I'm sure the remaining one will be used at a later date!).

The frames are a really nice size - 9.5cm wide by 13cm high and 2cm deep. I particularly liked the depth of them as it means they can stand on a shelf (as well as be hung on a wall).

When I first started thinking about how to alter them I didn't plan to cover the apertures, but the more I thought about the design I realised the apertures needed to be covered (too restrictive) as it would give me a more versatile area to work on.

I wanted each of the houses to be different but have common elements to create a set, so to achieve this each house would have:

* a fence (created with the Sizzix 'Garden Gate' die), all of which mounted on 3d foam to give depth and layering.
* a common colour scheme - Slate, Chalk, French Roast, Tinned Peas, Cherry Red, Turquoise,
* a door (created with the 'Artful Dwelling' Sizzix/Tim Holtz die)
* JOFY stamps
* same feature papers - such as kraft (there had to be some kraft!) and a crackle effect - the door, wall, fence
* button for a door knob

The houses were an easy shape to cut around and so I used them as the template for their base paper/card (needed to cover the aperture).  I used Matte Medium to glue the base layer to be frame - this allows for 'wiggle time' and lining up the edges.

I used 2 panels of kraft card for the crackle layers because it is sturdy enough to take paint, crackle glaze and die cutting.  I painted it with a layer of Mud splat and Slate, crackleglazed it and added a Chalk top layer - nice and neutral so it would be easy to add accent colours.  (nb I applied the top layer (Chalk) with a sponge on one panel which gives smaller cracks and cut the fences from this (photo below), and on the second sheet I used a brush so the cracks are more linear - I used this panel for the house base (shown above).)  I also cut a door from the crackled card.

House One

This house has a crackled surface, a corrugated door - horizontal corrugations completely exposed - painted Slate with the ridges highlighted with Chalk and Turquoise paint... and a button for a door knob (another common theme on the houses).

I stamped a row of grass/leaves (JOFY21) along the bottom edge and painted them with Tinned Peas, along with an additional few leaves. (I redrew the detail once the paint had dried.)  The grass and leaves will be covered by the garden fence but its nice to have the detail and images layering up to create detail.  The additional leaves are attached as if they are growing through the fence.

JOFY21

The tree is created with stamps from JOFY15 

JOFY15 

I stamped the tree onto Chatsworth paper that I had darkened with French Roast Fresco paint.
The flowers on this stamp set can be a bit tricky/fiddly to cut out individually and so cut around all three, leave the centre intact and paint it the colour of the tree as shown below:

The 'Chalk' coloured fence wouln't show against the house (same colour) and so I painted it with a diluted coat or two of French Roast... as this is a Translucent paint the cracks still show through (I also used the same colour on House 3).

House 2

The stamps sets I used for this house were JOFY22, JOFY24, JM12

   

JOFY22

JOFY24,

JM12

The base of the house is a brown page of Chatsworth papers, with small flowers stems stamped in 'Chalk' along the bottom edge (detail painted in Cherry Red & Turquoise), and a long stem flower stamped separately onto white card, painted and attached.

The door on this house is also corrugated cardboard but to make it different to House One's door I only peeled some of the smooth layer off & die cut the door so the corrugations were vertical.

Leaves were attached 'growing' through the crackled glazed fence.

House 3

Corrugated card is used for the main house, a lovely piece of crackled card for the front door, a nice brown fence and a button for a door knob!

The stamp set I used for this house is JOFY26

JOFY26

Behind the fence I stamped a row of bud stems directly onto the corrugated cardboard, along with the taller large flower stems - I also stamped this image onto white card and painted both.  Once the door was in place I 3d mounted some of the large flowers overlapping the door and the corresponding image. 

I used the 'Words Plate 2' alphabet from Ink & the Dog - this is a favourite alphabet from older PaperArtsy collection - really useful... I have several versions - one that I leave complete and use as a background and another that I've cut up to use for words etc (and another.. just in case! lol)

 'Words Plate 2'

I used the  alphabet to create 3 banners - one for each house - saying 'home' 'sweet' 'home'.  I stuck them onto the houses and was 'quite' happy with everything, and so I left them.  Here they are in situ:

I looked at them afresh a day later and decided they looked wrong, a bit heavy, clumsy and after a 'lightbulb' moment decided to simply stamp them directly onto the houses... simple.

I love these little houses!  They make me smile... and want to make more - I thought I was over my 'house' phase but maybe not.

To create these houses I upcyled/altered frames but you could easily create something similar with other substrates- there are some lovely wood houses in the Wood Substrates section of the PaperArtsy online shop.

A huge thanks to Jo from PaperArtsy HQ, we hope you never get over your 'house phase' as these are so delightful. A project that you cannnot help but smile at. The exposed corrugate is such a great touch, the perfect compliment to the stamped images. 

We would love you to join in with our monthly challenge. If you are inspired by any of this month's guests who have blogged between Sept 1st 2014 and Sept 30th 2014 then join in and link up your creativity HERE. You will go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. You need to add your link by 19:00 (London time) Sept 30th 2014