Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Hi everyone,  I just finished my latest little brick home. A couple of weeks ago I was on my way home from my doctor appointment and I passed by a little brick house in down town Denver, that I thought would be cool to try and build.  So I came right home and schetched it up and started to build it.  I am really thnking about making a few more of these.  It sort of felt like I now own that little brick home I passed.  It did take me about 2 weeks of building it with only a couple of hours to work on it every night after I got home from work.  I still need to teach myself house to paint the brick more realistically, but I feel it turned out nicely.  I hopee you all like.  I dont have much time to post with having two full time jobs but I wanted to post some pictures for you.  Have a Wonderful Week and Month!  I can wait to think up a new home to create.





I decided to add some miniature Christmas lights at the last minute before I took the house to my office at work.  Im OUT OF ROOM to store the houses at home, so my office at work is my display area for a few homes. 


After I drew up what I wanted on some plywood, I then cut it out with a jig saw and then nailed it together with my nail gun.



I kept messing up my measurements and not alot of straight lines, But I know that I will eventually cover up any defects and mistakes in my cutting.  Never give up even if it started to look ugly.  Just cover it with paper or scrubs, trees, moss, anything.

I hid all the electrical in the top left attic area.  The whole roof comes off the home easily to access the electrical. 

This was my favorite part.  Every night after work I would add more and more Paper and start to cut the bricks into shape, enjoying watching TV as I did so.

Here you can see how I have cut up a Black Towel into strips and then Hot Glued them in place to make my thatched looking roof.  Then once I had the whole roof covered, I brushed on alot of MojPods. I then let it dry and then dry brushed some light grey on it. 

Another picture of my gluing on the towel to make my thatched roof look.

Here is a picture of when I just completed the house and am now ready to start the interior. 


















The kitchen took my one night since I had to make the cabinets to fit since I did such a narrow opening. I had to cut the stove almost in half to make it work for scale in this area.  I felt that since the house should be around 80 years old I wanted some what of an older kitchen look almost like a grandmothers kitchen. 

I know that I am not a cabinet maker, but I used alot of scrap wood and peices of furniture I destroyed and cut up to make the cabinets.



Now I know there is no bedroom or bathroom in this little house, but use your imagination, that the house has been cut in half for you to see inside and the bathroom and bedroom are in the other section of the home.

Thursday, January 3, 2013


Hi everyone, I hope you all had a Wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.  I have just finished my newest little Cottage, which was so much fun to create.  This time I utilized the same paper clay to make all of the stones on the cottage and the stucco look.  But this time I used a different medium to create the wonderful Thatched Roof look.  I used a Towel, which I cut up into strips and glued down and then Mod Podged it and Walla.  For my first attempt at this new medium it was fun and I am very please with the look of the Thatched Roof.  I think that this will be about the size of my new Cottage Collection that I will be making for the upcoming Miniature Show this year to sell.  This little cottage took me a couple of hours to draw out on plywood, then about 1 hour to cut out, and about 3 days to complete which is because I was on Christmas Vacation and had lots of time to sit and create while watching Christmas Movies.  I hope you all like the newest cottage.  I will try to start getting more pictures taken of the building process, I completely overlooked taking pictures while creating this cottage.  Have a Great Month Everyone.  Hugs Stan








I almost didn't add any moss around the cottage at this point, since I really liked the fresh clean look as if someone had just finished building the cottage to live in.  But you know me I wanted to make the cottage look older and lived in. 






You can see in this picture the Modge Pod still drying on the newly created Thatched Roof. 


This is one of my favorite points when creating the cottage, is adding all the paper clay and starting to create all the stones.