WOYWW #439: Mixed-Media House

Morning Deskers! It's not as chilly as it was on Monday - brrr, that really got me! It was the first touch of Winter without the heating on! It's nice and toasty inside the house now, but we don't know how much it will cost to keep the house warm - we've never had oil heating before. We'll have to keep an eye on the consumption and find a sweet spot where it's still comfortable and affordable. The 14C on Monday was NOT comfortable! I felt like a Michelin man wrapped in layers and layers of clothing - I could hardly move, LOL!

I'm sharing a shot of my desk for WOYWW again today. It was taken at the weekend as that's the only time I have for crafting these days. Do you recognise this packaging? It's a new product that my son loves as a snack. I was about to chuck the empty box in the recycling bin when I had this sudden realisation: it looks just like a house! So I abandoned my plans to make washi tapes and I made a mixed media house instead!

I started out by sealing the box with some masking tape and then applied a layer of gesso. I then stuck on some wooden window shapes. At this point, it looked something like this, already very much resembling a house:

In the following steps, I added a layer of burnt umber paint, followed by crackle glaze and another layer of gesso and waited for the crackles to appear. When it was dry, I coloured the walls and the roof with distress inks. I used Broken China for the walls and Rusty Hinge for the roof. Later, I repainted the roof with Quinacridone Gold fluid acrylics, as the distress ink went a bit pale over the gesso, which was fine for the walls but I wanted something more vivid for the roof.

As a final touch, I added a few bits of ribbon and some wooden numbers to jazz it all up a bit and voila - it was ready! Here's the final look:

It was Halloween last night and we carved this pumpkin - I was planning to make pumpkin soup from the flesh, but I don't think this pumpkin was meant to be eaten. The flesh looked very pale and unappetizing - perhaps another time. However, I did save the seeds and roasted them, so it didn't all go to waste.

Happy WOYWW! I'll be doing my rounds later today!