Holiday Happiness

I love the holidays but what I love most is to create for the holidays. Ever since my first altered project, I have learned to love to create art with my scrap supplies. Recently, I just finished up a holiday house I made with scrapbooking products and my Shimmerz paints. This was such a fun little project to do! (if you want to see closer photos of the images in this post, just click on the photo itself)I experimented quite a bit with this little house. The first thing I experimented with was the roof. I wanted to give it that old "tin roof" look and I thought to myself what a better way to do this than with my Shimmerz Paints. This is what the roof looked like originally:In order for the paint to "stick" to the roof, I had to first sand it down to give it some roughness where the paint would be able to go into the grooves and stick. You can see the roughness in the photo, and that is what is what helped the paint stick. I ended up putting on 2 coats of the paint. In my first layer of paint, I used my Shimmerz in Coffee. I laid it down nice and thick (yes, you'll use a lot of your Shimmerz this way - but it's a great excuse just to buy more for yourself ;) !)With the first coat, what I did is it painted on the paint in a "stippling" effect, and this was the result. Looks a little strange this first coat, but just wait until you see the second coat. Note - give your paint time to dry! You are not going to be able to put that second layer on right away. I gave it like an hour to make sure it was dry all the way before beginning the second coat.

For this second coat, I used my Shimmerz in Coal, and again, I laid it on nice and thick. I did the same thing with this coat, I didn't just "paint" on the paint, I stippled it again. I love that in certain areas that the glitter built up, it gave it a nice texture to the roof, and gave it more of a realistic effect. Once again, give it time to dry - which with this coat of Shimmerz, I waited an entire day before coming back to the project.

The next step I took was to do the front and back of the house. This was easy for the back, as all I had to do was to measure my scrapbook paper and adhere the paper. The front was a little more work, and is what really made me decide on how to do the sides of the house. ;) For the front, I laid down a coat of acrylic paint, which in this case I used Olive Green acrylic paint. Then I measured out where my windows and the door were in relation to the paper, and laid this all out on the paper and cut out the openings. With this house, the windows were not exactly straight, which made this task slightly harder, but I worked with it. Once I got the paper down, I went ahead and painted the windows with my Shimmerz Fire Engine Red and the door with Shimmerz Coffee. Love the results of the shimmering windows!
See how beautiful the colors turned out? (Just a note, the ribbon, tree, and other embellishments were all added after all of the painting was complete)

Next came the sides of the house. Now - originally these were just plain wood sides. What I did was give the sides a base coat before I painted them completely. I got some card stock held on the complete front and back to protect them, and then coated the sides with my Shimmerz Spritz in Treasured Hymn, subtle but effective for the first coat of paint, as you'll see:I let this dry, which actually dried quite quickly with the help of me using my heat gun to help speed up this process. Once dried, I went ahead and started to stipple the sides of the house using my Shimmerz Mossy Stone, and let me tell you, I LOVE this color!!!After the first coat was done - I highlighted the sides a little bit more by adding some of my Shimmerz Blingz in Hi Ho Silver, which gave the sides a much higher sheen to the sides and a lot more depth than just having one color. When the sides were completely done, I painted the windows again in Shimmerz Fire Engine Red. Perfect touch!

Finally, for the roof, I went ahead wanted to give some "snow" on the roof, so what I did was sprayed over the roof with my Shimmerz Spritz in Licorice (to keep with the neutral color) and then added some white embossing powder right on top of the spritz. I used my heat gun to set the embossing powder on top and even though some of the paint bubbled from the heat, I think it added a little more character to the roof. Once I was done with the heat setting, I sprayed a little of my Shimmerz Spritz in Truffle, to tone down the white embossing powder, but did it very lightly. To complete the house, I added some little touches like the gold cord to the roof, the little wreath button, the snowflake buttons, 'believe" button word, the ribbon border and the chipboard tree. I really love the way this turned out and it's now displayed in my living room along with all of the other Christmas decorations I have up!
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope I have inspired you to use your Shimmerz Paints in more ways than you originally thought imaginable. :)
-Deanna