Every time I come across a great idea in a magazine that I want to try, I set it aside for a "rainy day". The other day, I was down in my studio and the house was all torn apart from renovating, the weather was terrible, and there wasn't a darn thing going on and I just decided to pull out some of those rainy day ideas. I came across one from
Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. A printmaker was looking for inspiration and got the idea to make these little houses. Hey, I'm a printmaker, my house renovations are creating lots of 2 x 4" scraps..this could work! A few quick cuts with a miter saw and some rough sanding later, and I had made myself a little wooden village. I then stained each little house with some water based stains. The next step was to take out old linoleum blocks and some wood engravings, and make a few new patterned blocks from EZ cut. I was ready to print. I found some lightweight Japanese printing paper and had a heyday printing all sorts of things on each page. These had to dry overnight. (Luckily, it rained for four days straight! Who'd have thought that would be a good thing?) When the prints dried, I painted them with watercolors and then began the fun part - cutting out pieces and gluing them onto the blocks with matte medium. The process was kind of like decoupage, only quicker. The final step was to seal all the little houses with an acrylic varnish. This project was so much fun that I ended up making a whole little village of houses.
Now if anyone can think of a use for a whole village of printed houses, could you please let me know before the next rainy day?
Every time I come across a great idea in a magazine that I want to try, I set it aside for a "rainy day". The other day, I was down in my studio and the house was all torn apart from renovating, the weather was terrible, and there wasn't a darn thing going on and I just decided to pull out some of those rainy day ideas. I came across one from Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine. A printmaker was looking for inspiration and got the idea to make these little houses. Hey, I'm a printmaker, my house renovations are creating lots of 2 x 4" scraps..this could work! A few quick cuts with a miter saw and some rough sanding later, and I had made myself a little wooden village. I then stained each little house with some water based stains. The next step was to take out old linoleum blocks and some wood engravings, and make a few new patterned blocks from EZ cut. I was ready to print. I found some lightweight Japanese printing paper and had a heyday printing all sorts of things on each page. These had to dry overnight. (Luckily, it rained for four days straight! Who'd have thought that would be a good thing?) When the prints dried, I painted them with watercolors and then began the fun part - cutting out pieces and gluing them onto the blocks with matte medium. The process was kind of like decoupage, only quicker. The final step was to seal all the little houses with an acrylic varnish. This project was so much fun that I ended up making a whole little village of houses. 
Now if anyone can think of a use for a whole village of printed houses, could you please let me know before the next rainy day?
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