Making a Mini House Diorama with Cardboard, Paint, and Sculpey

In my day job, I work with a lot of specialized archival cardboard, called blueboard. We end up with lots of scraps so I brought some home, along with a scrap of foam board, and made a little house. 

I opened up the blueboard to reveal the corrugation to make the "tin" roof. 

I had no plan. I just started making. Every day I came home from work and added this, and painted that, and plastered here, and sculpted there. 

I used DAP compound to give the house a stucco texture and for the texture of the ground. 

I painted everything using Folk Art Paints.  

I made a fence out of wood skewers.

I used my Easy Cutter to slice the skewers length wise to make the horizontal slats. Above they are being held up with cardboard while the glue dries. 

I love this Easy Cutter. Great for making angled cuts on small pieces of wood, plastic, cardboard, etc. 

Then, I had a packaging box at home that had a curved edge, and it felt like it would be a good landscape backdrop for my house. 

I channeled Bob Ross for sure. 

I painted my fence white. 

Then sculpey got involved and I added happy little trees and shrubs, a bird bath, and finally a foundation around the entire piece. I used more wood skewers to poke into the sculpey to hold up the backdrop.

I painted the back of the backdrop to look like a wooden wall.  It kind of made me think of an old abandoned billboard in the middle of nowhere. 

This has got to be the cutest thing I have ever made.  We all know mini anything is forever a winner. Why do we love miniature things so much? I don't know. Does it make us feel like kids again? Maybe? 

All I know is I completely lost track of time every time I worked on this. It was so much fun, and I'm not even done!  Stay tuned!

♥

Thanks for visiting!

It Was A Sculpey Christmas

We still have our tree up, so that means I can continue to talk about Christmas, right?

I have been wanting to work with sculpey polymer clay for the longest time, and I finally got the nerve up. 

My family is lucky they received anything at all, because these little figurines turned out so cute, I wanted to keep them all to myself. 

Look at those tiny camp fires, which are about the size of my fingernail. Those tents! That motorcycle!

And that tiny canoe. Probably my favorite thing!

Here they are in front of the butter dish for scale. 

And those little birdies on the trees! 

TINY!

I wish I dreamed up the idea for the camping items on my own, but the inspiration came from The Market Darling's precious campsites (pictured below), which I originally saw in her Etsy shop. 

Talk about cute overload.

via: The Market Darling

 The campsites I made were for my two brothers. One of them got the canoe, and the other got a motorcycle. Also, instead of gluing them to card stock as The Market Darling did, I had my fiance cut two slices from a cherry tree log and I hot-glued the figurines to them. Why didn't I take a picture of them? I don't know. Maybe I can get one of my brothers to take a picture for me to show you. 

My sister and mother each received a snowman, like the one above, some trees and even a gingerbread house. Why didn't I take a picture of them, either? Again, I don't know, but maybe my sister will take a picture for me to show you. hint hint! 

Oh, and also I have to show you what my sister made me for Christmas! 

soon!

Thanks for visiting. 

Clay Girl

This is a special little polymer clay girl. She is about 2 inches tall. 

I will tell you more about her when she is finished.

And yes, we still have the tree up. :)