A little cottage creation

 

My long time friend, Gail, hosted a swap for Birdsong.  It involved those paper mache cottages you find at hobby stores. The minute she announced it, I HAD to make one!

My first step was to paint all of the edges and corners that might show.  Then I covered the roof in vintage wallpaper, cut into scallop shapes to make shingles.

The rims that fit the lid to the base of the box were also painted white, because if you cover that with paper, the box lid sticks and never quite fits right.  I also painted the inside and front walls pink, and wallpapered the back inside wall.   I thought it would be much too complicated to try to paper the walls of windows, too many tiny holes to sand around!

The bottom, or floor, is covered in a large patterned, flocked wallpaper.

Next, I covered the chimney with another wallpaper, and poked two holes in the top of it to thread wire through and attach a bird cage from.  The little glittered cage now dangles over a table made of an empty spool of ribbon covered in a paper doily.

I lazily cut out strips of lace to cover the upper and lower windows instead of making separate curtains for each.  They are gathered up and squished into a bead of glue to hang.

The chairs are made of chip board and are covered in scraps of vintage fabric we are using for my journal class.  And the portrait on the wall is a small frame that I painted and added a post card picture to. It is a little over sized for the room, but I prefer to think of it as dramatic.

The final interior touch was a bowl of posies.  They are millinery blooms in a mini tart tin.

The exterior was covered in strips of text from a 1930s Kansas Primer.  Well, I'd hoped it would look like siding, but it really doesn't.  The window and door trim is strips cut from an old book about birds.

I glittered the "siding", added moss on the "ground" and two small pink trees. Then, I thought it looked way, way too Christmassy.

 
Adding some blooms to the trees and some flower beds around the foundation helped.

I thought a bird's nest made it more springlike.

As did some climbing vines.

But my favorite part? The anticipation of the excitement of swap night at Birdsong!  Swaps are such a generous sharing of talent. I am always touched by the thoughtfulness.