~House Swap + Mini + more baubles!

Back in May, the lovely Diane on the Cricut message board started a House Swap.  I have never done a swap before and somehow I got talked into this one.  The timeframe was very generous (2 1/2 months!), so I figured I would have no problem with the commitment.  I apologize in advance for this very long post, but this was a labor intensive project and I need to 'splain.  There are pics below, I promise!

I was paired with Nanci and although she is not a message board member (yet!) we traded emails back and forth on the things that may interest us and I settled on a Dog theme for her since her furbabies are very special to her. 

One thing I learned during this process is that there are not many "dog" paper collections.  Fortunately, I still had a half of a DCVW Puppy Stack (retired) left from doing an album for the service dog my sister trained.  The only other collection I could find was by BoBunny, so I bought 2 pads to do this project.  I then proceeded to buy dog ribbon, dog fabric, dog charms, dog beads, a peeing dog....well, you get the idea!  lol

Our task was to decorate a medium size (or alternative) paper mache house from Hobby Lobby, create a mini album ORtag album with at least 5 pages and create EITHER a chunky charm OR 3 stick pins.  Well I did four of them.  The paper mache house was probably the hardest to do.  Cutting and fitting wall paper isn't my idea of fun, but I love the way it turned out.  I used balsa wood for the shingles and applied a light blue acrylic "wash" before cutting/adhering them.  I added faux bricks along the base of the house and around the chimney by cutting foam sheets and adhering to paper and then spraying with "stone" paint.  From factorydirectcraft.com, I got the door mat, the fire hydrant and the two puppies on the front porch.  I needed a porch bigger than the house had, so I mounted the whole thing on a sheet of acrylic.  I added green Celebrate It confetti using Glossy accents to the acrylic to mimic grass.   A couple of pine trees from Michaels' completed the outdoors.  Inside is a dog bed and some kind of painte'rs thing that looked like two dog bowls to me, so that's what they became.  I added some grape nut cereal for dog food and coated with glossy accents. There is also a picture of the poker playing dogs inside.  Outside I added a few cuts from Paper Pups.  We joked on the message board that this house was Rose Red.  That's because I kept adding to it everytime I thought it was done.  Finally I just mailed the darn thing or it might have gotten a basement or 3rd floor!

The House

Next up was the mini album.  I knew I wanted to do way more than 5 pages and JennyD posted some links to some tutorials by My Sisters Scrapper for a paper bag mini.  It looked fabulous, so that's what I set out to make.  Here again I used BoBunny paper and miscellaneous doggie themed embellies that I picked up in various places.  This mini used the medium sized Celebrate It paper bags from Michaels and A LOT of 2 sided tape!  I also attached my chunky charm to the spine.  This album will hold AT LEAST 30 pictures.  The picture shows yellow and blue ribbons on the spine, but I later changed these to blue/white before I mailed.  Just because.  I had a dog tag made for each of Nanci's 3 furbabies and attached to a medium dog collar (with paws!) that I picked up at Walmart.  This became the mini's closure.

My Mini

And finally, because Nanci chose stick pins over a chunky charm, I made these three for her.  The folder also use the DCWV puppy stack paper.  I added a few little charms to the center (main) stick pin.

The stick pins

I sure hope Nanci liked it all.  This was a really fun project and now maybe I won't be so nervous about getting involved in some of the message board swaps.  I sure learned a few things during this process, but I had a great time.  I can't WAIT to see what Nanci has made for me!  Thanks for stopping by!