I just wanted to post a sneek peek on the progress that I made this weekend on the Winter Gnome House.  I lounged around the house this weekend, since I have a horrible head cold and cough, so lots of up and down time working on the new house in between cold medicine and naps. 

 Today I made alot of progress, I cooked for most of the day in which I made 3 banana cream  pies, 2 very large vegetarian lasagnas-at least 20pds apiece.  I am the only male in an office of about 13 women, and I enjoy feeding them, so 1 of the pans of lasagna is for the ladies at work for lunch ( I decided to experiment for one of the ladies who is vegetarian and when I cook she never gets to eat any of it, so hopefully she'll enjoy it).  Everyone at home loved the lasagna until they were about half way done eating and I asked if they liked the flavor of the meat in the lasagna, which they loved, until I let them know it was Fake, and it was all veggies processed to look like meat, and tofu.  Then they were upset I told them, and they didnt like it as much-crazy people. 

So while I was cooking all day, I was able to complete alot of work on the house.  I think I spent all last night making up papermache and using paperclay and applying to the house, it will probably take a week to dry completely.  I spent about 4 hours this morning just painting the paperclay white for snow, I still need to glue the Snow Flakes on top of all the snow, but I'm tired and will do it next weekend.  I found a base for the house at the thrift store, which was a TV tray which I turned upside down and glued the house to it.  The house was pretty large, so it took 7 stores to find a big enough item to place the house on.

I'm not sure if I will do more Winter Houses or not, I really like the look, and for my first attempt at a winter scene, it was pretty fun.  But it doubled the cost since it took alot of paperclay to create all the snow on the home, and it also doubled the work time.  Hopefully next weekend I will be able to finish the exterior and install the lights and the decor. 

I hope everyone has a Wonderful Week!  Stan

Sorry for a delay in posting my current weekly project.  The past week has been truly overwhelming, my partner Rob had to go to the ER and was then admitted to the Hospital for the weekend-with major pain and infection throughout his body that the Doctors have no idea whats up, and while this was all going on,  I ended up driving around 1,000 miles taking my dog Rocky back and forth to have an eye surgery in Loveland Colorado, since he was recently diagnosed with Diabeties, and he went blind in about 3 weeks with cataracts.  Rocky is finally seeing again, and the two develepmentally disabled gentlemen that I take care of are both sick.  So im still a little tired this weekend.

So I only had a few pictures to download tonight.  I had a chance to finally work on the new Gnome House this weekend.  I started it last weekend, in between a the above kaotic schedule, but it took the whole week for the house to dry, very very thick paper areas.  It is my Mushroom House, that I plan to make into a Winter Snow Cottage.  This time I wanted to think out of the box when making the house.  My two previous houses were more of Tree stump homes, but I thought a Mushroom would be cool.  This house took me a little longer to built the frame of the home since you can open it up to access three different areas.  I hope to have some more time next weekend to work on this house.  It seems that I am truly loving working with this form of medium, the Paper is so fun to use that I almost become lost in creating! 

I hope to continue to imagine many different homes to build. I have a goal of at least 8 homes to built, before I see if people might be interested in buying my work.

Thanks for letting me share a little with you all, waiting for the end of the week to get to work on the House is how I make it through my work week, which helps me to de-stress.

I hope you all like the start of my new Gnome Mushroom Home.

My Second Gnome Home. April 2011

I think I finally finished my newest Gnome Home.  I was able to spend many hours working on it this weekend.  I got absolutely no cleaning around the house done, but I did have alot of fun standing at least 20 hours at the kitchen counter working on the new home, and watching all the lastest new release movies.  I hope you all like the new house.  Hopefully I can get started on a new home soon, so please check back soon.  A couple of you did get me inspired from your email-comments to create a Winter Gnome Home.  So well see if I can get one started soon, hopefully before we start to remodel the kitchen.

                                                 

The upstairs bedroom. I also has a little Gnome Bath Tub by the bed.

I even added outdoor lights hidden throughout the greenery around the house.

I worked quite a few hours this weekend adding all the forest greenery around the house.

The finished look to the porch light.

Yah! I finally finished the electrical this weekend.

I wanted to find a cool looking way to install the porch light.  So I used a peice of metal pipe and surrounded it by some more paper clay and made it look like a tree branch coming out of the house.

I then painted the new floor, and created an identical floor for the second story.

I tore the box apart and cut it out to fit the floor.

I found a wood basket at the thrift store that looked like miniature bamboo.  So I thought this would make a cool looking floor for my new Gnome House. 

New Gnome Home

 

Having two full time jobs, one taking care of two developmentally disabled gentlemen who live with me, and  the other job in which I am a Program Quality Assurance Coordinator for a company which assist around 80 people with developmental disabilities, doesnt leave me alot of time to work on my craft projects.

I only had a day to work on this house this weekend.  Hopefully next weekend I will be able to finish completing the outside of the house, plus start the electrical and add lights. 

I spent about an hour adding a mossy look on the outside of the house, with lots of glue and ground cover stuff.

I was going to leave the mushrooms creme color, but I did not like the look, so im going to add some ground cover to them to make them look brighter.

I actually was sort of liking the white look of the house, and I am thinking that I might make a house with a winter scene one day, with lots of snow on it.

Im not the best painter, so this is a little ruff, and i keep changing my mind on what color it should be.