Altered houses

It's been a long time since I made anything altered. I think it's the fear of change, and not being able to steal sketch ideas like I do so well. The first altered item I ever made was an altered lunchpail. It acctually turned out really cute, and maybe I'll post a picture of it someday. I've made some altered clipboards as gifts, and those turned out really cute, but I've never altered a house.

I bought this chipboard house from the Crafty Secrets booth at the expo. (craftysecrets.com) They also had alterable chipboard dresses and overalls that were REALLY cute, as well as tons of new acrylic stamps to drool over. These alterable chipboard houses are very cheap (only 5.99) and include all the pieces to construct the house, and more! The finished house is about 6 inches high and 3 inches wide, and opens up for all kinds of possibilities on the inside!

I've seen these houses used for decoration in a room (i.e. Christmas village), to host mini albums, or to put pictures inside for show. The great thing about these cute little houses is that it took me less than 2 hours to finish it!

The paper I used was a paper pad from Maricella K's Lucy's Linens line. I adhered everything with mod podge, and was ecstatic that it all stuck down and STAYED down!
I used catseye brown chalk ink (can't live without it), and some ribbon from Joann's. The rubons and 3-d stickers were also from Maricella K.

I used the chipboard house as my template to trace my paper pieces, and used an exacto knife as well as scissors to cut them out. After inking the edges of the paper and adhering it to the chipboard house, I used a Making Memories sanding tool to distress all of the edges.

I havn't decorated the inside of the house yet, because I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it now that I've finished it. Could be a gift...could be a prize...we'll see!

Here are some pics!