Inside Out Halloween House

Hello everyone!

Well, I'm finally back in the craft room, and just in time for Halloween.

I call this year's project the "Inside Out Halloween House".

On the outside it looks like a regular house, with lots of windows and a front door   But this house has a secret, which is....

...it opens up!

The house is about 12" tall at the top of the tower roof, and about 8" x 10" at the base.  It is entirely made of chipboard and decorative paper, and features Pebbles "Midnight Haunting" Halloween paper.  I used both 12x12 sheets and the 6x6 paper pad from this line.

Here we are looking at the house from the left front corner.

Turning again, there is a large bay that extends from the back section of the house, with a large circular window above.

The orange section with the smaller circular window is in the center of the house - everything wraps around that section.

On the left is a section with a small porch and a large dormer above.






The house has seven sections in all.  The sections are joined to one another with strips of Tyvek under the decorative paper.  When it is opened up, it stretches a little over two feet, and the outside looks like this...

Here are closeups of each of the sections.

This little section has a bay window.

It has a circular element cut from the paper line.

There is a magnet behind the left edge in the back which keeps the house together when it is in the closed position.

The section is about 3 inches wide, 1 1/2 inches deep and 5 1/2 inches tall.

This section has a little porch with a roof.  The roof is held up with 1/8" dowel columns.

Above the porch is a large dormer.

The section is about 3 inches wide, 2 inches deep and 8 inches tall.

The back section has the large bay extension.  The bay comes out about an inch and has a sloped roof.

The circular window is about 1 1/2" in diameter.

This section is 4 inches wide and 2 inches deep.  It stands about 7 inches tall.

The tower has a pyramid shaped roof that is removable.

There are four windows at the top.

There is a platform inside with an LED tea light.

The tower is square, about 2 inches on a side, and 12 inches tall.

This section has a wrap-around porch supported by one column in the corner.  That column is also a 1/8 inch dowel.

Above the porch is a shallow dormer on each side.

This section is also square, and about 3 inches on each side.  It is about 8 inches tall.

Here's the section with the front door.

It has a little flight of steps - each step and riser is 1/4 inch wide/tall.

There is a curved roof under the striped pattern paper.

This section is 3 inches wide and 1 1/2 inches deep.  It is about 6 1/2 inches tall.

The final section is the innermost part of the house.

The windows on this side are actually inset, since everything must be flat where the other sections come up against this section.

The insets are about 1/4 inch deep.

The section itself is 3 inches wide, 1 1/2 inches deep and stands a little over 9 inches tall.




Now let's take another look at the inside...

Each niche is 3/4" deep.

This one has a curved top made from light weight chipboard.

The creature is cut with one of the dies from Tim Holtz "Silly Monsters" die set.

This is the inside of the section with the front door (you can see the striped roof at the top).

There are two niches in this section - one with a monster, and one with letters from Tim Holtz Halloween Typography set that spell out
"F R I G H T".

The niches in this section come in from a corner.

This is the section that has the large porch that opens on two sides on the outside.

Again, a silly monster and a Typography word.  This word is "T R I C K" - the first part of the "Trick or Treat" phrase.

There wasn't much room for a niche in this middle section, but just enough for "O R".

This is the inside of the back section of the house.

A grumpy looking monster stands over the last word needed for the "Trick or Treat" phrase...
"T R E A T".

The last of the Silly Monsters.

This is the largest so you can see the coloring details the best on it.

I used watercolor paper to cut out the monsters and then colored them with Distress Oxide inks.

I glued each one to black cardstock and them carefully cut them out to leave a black border.

They each have black half pearl eyes.

Well, there were seven sections, but only six Silly Monsters dies, so this last niche has a ghost.

It comes from another Tim Holtz 2017 die release.

Above the ghost, Typography letters spell out the word, "B O O".












So that's my 2017 Halloween project.  I hope you enjoyed seeing it.  I made a video tour and I'll post the link below.  And if you are interested in making this project yourself, stay tuned... sometime later this week there will be another post with links to the Material and Cutting Guide, templates and a series of construction videos.

Until then, thanks for visiting, and Happy Halloween!!
April