Greggs Miniature Imaginations- (Ever After Cottages)

I've been busy the past couple of months and also uninspired to create any new houses.  But a couple of weeks ago I did finally get inspired and created this little Christmas Cottage.  I thinks its one of my favorite shingle jobs I've done yet.  It took about 9 hours to put around 2,000 shingles on this house with hot glue and going as fast as I could.  Plus I like the roof shape that I created even though it was a pain trying to figure out how to make it and so that it also lifts off the top of the house for easy entry.  I hope you all like my newest creation.  Now a lady from work would like me to fix up her 50 year old Dollhouse her dad built her when she was a kid.  Its very interesting 2 story house in the 1960-1970s colors and style.  But she trust me and loves my work, so I told her I'm going to gut it and give it a 200 year old Tudor Style House look, but on the cheap for her.  She couldn't part with it and her husband thinks its to ugly to display.  So hopefully when I'm done she'll have a nice display piece and is also to keep the sentimental part of the house.  Have a Wonderful Weekend everyone.  Big  Hugs!!! Stan

I'm still not a very good painter and do not really like the paint job I did on the paper stones and wish I would have left them the original color.

I really like the new wood aging process that Norms Dollhouse told me about.  Mixing Denatured Alcohol with Indian-Black Ink.  a couple drops of ink into a glass of the denatured alcohol until you like the color then brush it onto the wood and instant grey stain that dry's almost immediately.  You do need lots of ventilation. 

Once I white washed the stucco and rubbed it off to let the grey paper show underneath it really shows the Styrofoam piece I used to texture the stucco.

In the process of adding all the electrical lines to the house.

This is where I wish I would have left the original paper color of the stones I made.  I really like the light grey color.

At this point in the house I was so grateful to finally have all the paper stucco and paper stones done around the house.  The base stones took me about 4 or 5 hours to make, and the fire place chimneys  took me about 4 hours a piece.  Not counting all the time to add all the shingles. 

This is one step on adding the stucco around the house.  I brush on some wood glue and the push some paper clay into the sections.  Then I looked around the house before doing this to find something to make the texture of the stucco and cut up some hard Styrofoam and pushed it into the paper clay which gave the paper small round impressions which I thought was different and cool looking. 

I use a lot of clay to hide my bad wood working skills.  I don't believe in perfection, but do believe in hiding imperfections to look more perfect. 

I do wish I had some good wood cutting tools.  I also wish I had better wood working skills.  Currently this house is cut out with just a electric jig saw.  One day I want a table saw and scroll saw router and lots of stuff to do a more professional job.  PS this is how the house looks like without the roof on.   

I forgot to take picture of me drawing the house out on plywood and then cutting the pieces out.  This took me about 2 hours to cut out all the pieces and glue them together, then about 3 hours to cut and glue on all the raised wood pieces. 

This is the back side of the house I made that comes off for side entry.