Autumn Fairy House

I love autumn and all the fall colors.  When I saw Bo Bunny's Autumn Song paper I just knew I had to have it - the colors are so vibrant.

And then Laura Denison of Following the Paper Trail decided to showcase her Autumn Fairy house pattern with this paper collection.   When Laura previewed the house on her blog (lauradenisondesigns.com) I was just blown away, and couldn't wait to make it.

The house itself is fun with its curlicue dormers and rolled shingles.  But the stump and the tree that it is built into - what a fantastic idea!  I do so love her designs.

I added a couple of my own touches - the wraparound curved balcony with the twig railing and a couple of extra staircases.

So let's look at some closeups...

Here is the right side of the house. You can see how the stump grows up into the tree and how the fairy house fits right up against the tree.

The stump and tree were made with brown lunch sack papier mache - Laura has an excellent video on this technique.  All of the bark details on the tree were made with Light Molding Paste and a "Funny Brush" - yes, that is the actual name of the brush.  It has rubber bristles and is excellent for creating texture.   You can see one of the stairs I added - just paper leaves attached to a twig that fit nicely along the side of the tree.  And do you see the little owl sitting inside a knot hole?

Here's a closeup of the stump under the porch.

Here is a bird's-eye view of the front door and front porch area.

I wanted to bring more texture and "tree" up around the house, so I increased the size of the balcony and have it wrapping around three sides of the house.   I had a sack of twigs and I decided to use them to make the fence around the balcony.
The slate walkway and the grass were formed using the Light Molding Paste and the "Funny Brush".

Here's the left side of the house.  Because of the reflection, you can's see that the windows actually look like stained glass.  The house lights up with space for several LED tea lights in the main room and up in the tower.

You can also see the pine cone hanging as a decoration over the front of the house.

There's a dark area on the side of the house under the right window - that's a little back door.

Now we're looking at the back.

You can see how the tree continues up and the tower of the house is part of the tree.

I added the third staircase on the end of the porch.  That's the "emergency exit" for the back door of the house.  It's two twigs with paper covered chipboard steps.

You can see two horizontal lines in the tree trunk.  In the next photo you will see what that is all about.

Yes - a mini album fits inside of the tree!

When the album is removed it also provides access to insert the LED tea lights for the tower and the main house.

And now for the mini...

Here's the cover.  You can see one of the red berries from the outside of the spine sticking up at the top.

I used lots of the Autumn Song stickers and some die cuts to decorate the mini.

There are six pages to the album.

You can see the edges of the cardstock pages in this photo.  They graduate in all the fall colors.

Each page has a pocket on the front with a tag insert.

When the page is flipped up, there is an envelope on the back.  I decorated the envelope with some of the die cuts and a punched maple leaf (EK Success).

Inside of each envelope is a tag with a quote or poem about autumn.

The envelope flips out to the right to reveal another pocket with another tag with a poem.

(Not pictured) The envelope actually flips one more time to the left to reveal two more sides with die cuts and leaves.





I made a couple of videos...
...a 360 tour
 

... and the mini album