I Still Think It's Wednesday
123 Silly Mountain Road
It's late on Wednesday night, so until I go to bed and get up again, it's Wednesday. Really!
Here's why I've been so quiet for the last few days. I've been working feverishly on my houses for the In This House Yahoo group's Skylines & Skyscrapers 2 swap. I had intended when I signed up to make much smaller houses all different and much more urban. I was thinking businesses, offices, and apartment buildings, maybe even a hotel. But when I sat down to design, what popped out of my pencil was this house.
On Labor Day, we were out for a run with the Rat Pack and went past a road called Silly Mountain Road. That name just stuck in my head. It was so charming. And I thought it would be fun to design a house to live on that road.
I can see that it is definitely inspired by my former home in Bailey, Colorado. The honey colored cedar siding and front door are directly from it. My friend, neighbor, and the best house painter in the world, Dan-O, and I spent two hours mixing samples and bickering in a friendly way over that color before we came up with one that satified both of us artistically. I think I was the first client he ever had who actually knew how to mix paint! My house was number 19 and it had a deck that spanned half of the front of the house, but this one still resembles it.
I'd intended to eventually add on in the back, which would have been a two storey addition because of the slope. I'd contemplated painting the trim a really dark forest green with red touches (and maybe some cream touches in small places). It has to be my house. That's Mr. Jaspy there looking out the living room window at us!
After I finished drawing this house, I drew another right next to it on the watercolor paper. Then I realized that they were just going downhill if I was going to draw them all by hand. So I inked the first one and erased all the pencil marks (or so I thought!) and scanned it in black and white but at a high density of dots. When I imported it to CorelDraw, I could see how much of the pencil remained and had to go to PhotoShop Elements to clean it up a little more.
After a lot of fiddling, I managed to coax my Epson R1800 printer to not just pull the 10.8" x 13.6" pages of 140# CP Fabriano Artistico studio paper through and spit it out again but to actually print 6 houses on each sheet. It's a miracle my hair is still long after that trial! I hadn't used the printer in a year so just getting to it and getting the dust off of it was a challenge. I printed 15 images for the 13 I needed in case there were any problems in production and because I'll send 13 off and not get one of my own back, I think. So I made 15. At 3 1/4" x 6 3/8", they are pushing the limits of the rules but I love how they turned out.
The houses are all watercolored by hand, then I cut out the front window and replaced it with some mica glued on with my trusty, indispensable adhesive, the Ultimate Glue. Next, I found a suitable photo of my late, great, dearly departed Jasper because who else would be looking out that window? I cut them out and ran them through the 1 1/2" Xyron and adhered them in the proper place to a 2" x 2 1/2" piece of old encyclopedia page and stuck that on with Tombow adhesive. I couldn't find my copper colored metal tape so I used silver metal tape on the roof and chimney top and colored them with Chili Red Adirondack Alcohol Ink. (I always wanted a metal roof on my house but couldn't decide between red and green.) I added some red heart-shaped brads on the flower box and a small silver brad for a doorknob.
Don't ask me where those blue plantation shutters came from! Maybe nights laying in bed listening to the wind howl before I fell asleep? Having real shutters to close would have felt so much more secure. Living alone in bear country on top of a mountain listening to a lynx purr outside can be eerie, especially at night.
Finally, I used a mixture of Tombow permanent adhesive and my other favorite, Perfect Paper Adhesive to glue the pages onto more sheets torn from my old set of encyclopedias. (I bought the 5 volume set because I loved the navy blue leather covers and so far have only used tons of the paper though it doesn't look it.) Then I cut them out being careful to undercut by angling the top of the scissors away from the center of the house, so no text paper would show through. I thought that PPA stuck to everything but it didn't like the silvered copper tape which is why I used the Tombow adhesive on the metal parts and PPA on the paper parts to save some $$.
And because I love smearing it around with my fingers. I admit it. Gooey can be fun! These lovelies are going in the mail to Susie tomorrow.
Which is Thursday!
It's late on Wednesday night, so until I go to bed and get up again, it's Wednesday. Really!Here's why I've been so quiet for the last few days. I've been working feverishly on my houses for the In This House Yahoo group's Skylines & Skyscrapers 2 swap. I had intended when I signed up to make much smaller houses all different and much more urban. I was thinking businesses, offices, and apartment buildings, maybe even a hotel. But when I sat down to design, what popped out of my pencil was this house.
On Labor Day, we were out for a run with the Rat Pack and went past a road called Silly Mountain Road. That name just stuck in my head. It was so charming. And I thought it would be fun to design a house to live on that road.
I can see that it is definitely inspired by my former home in Bailey, Colorado. The honey colored cedar siding and front door are directly from it. My friend, neighbor, and the best house painter in the world, Dan-O, and I spent two hours mixing samples and bickering in a friendly way over that color before we came up with one that satified both of us artistically. I think I was the first client he ever had who actually knew how to mix paint! My house was number 19 and it had a deck that spanned half of the front of the house, but this one still resembles it.
I'd intended to eventually add on in the back, which would have been a two storey addition because of the slope. I'd contemplated painting the trim a really dark forest green with red touches (and maybe some cream touches in small places). It has to be my house. That's Mr. Jaspy there looking out the living room window at us!
After I finished drawing this house, I drew another right next to it on the watercolor paper. Then I realized that they were just going downhill if I was going to draw them all by hand. So I inked the first one and erased all the pencil marks (or so I thought!) and scanned it in black and white but at a high density of dots. When I imported it to CorelDraw, I could see how much of the pencil remained and had to go to PhotoShop Elements to clean it up a little more.
After a lot of fiddling, I managed to coax my Epson R1800 printer to not just pull the 10.8" x 13.6" pages of 140# CP Fabriano Artistico studio paper through and spit it out again but to actually print 6 houses on each sheet. It's a miracle my hair is still long after that trial! I hadn't used the printer in a year so just getting to it and getting the dust off of it was a challenge. I printed 15 images for the 13 I needed in case there were any problems in production and because I'll send 13 off and not get one of my own back, I think. So I made 15. At 3 1/4" x 6 3/8", they are pushing the limits of the rules but I love how they turned out.
The houses are all watercolored by hand, then I cut out the front window and replaced it with some mica glued on with my trusty, indispensable adhesive, the Ultimate Glue. Next, I found a suitable photo of my late, great, dearly departed Jasper because who else would be looking out that window? I cut them out and ran them through the 1 1/2" Xyron and adhered them in the proper place to a 2" x 2 1/2" piece of old encyclopedia page and stuck that on with Tombow adhesive. I couldn't find my copper colored metal tape so I used silver metal tape on the roof and chimney top and colored them with Chili Red Adirondack Alcohol Ink. (I always wanted a metal roof on my house but couldn't decide between red and green.) I added some red heart-shaped brads on the flower box and a small silver brad for a doorknob.
Don't ask me where those blue plantation shutters came from! Maybe nights laying in bed listening to the wind howl before I fell asleep? Having real shutters to close would have felt so much more secure. Living alone in bear country on top of a mountain listening to a lynx purr outside can be eerie, especially at night.
Finally, I used a mixture of Tombow permanent adhesive and my other favorite, Perfect Paper Adhesive to glue the pages onto more sheets torn from my old set of encyclopedias. (I bought the 5 volume set because I loved the navy blue leather covers and so far have only used tons of the paper though it doesn't look it.) Then I cut them out being careful to undercut by angling the top of the scissors away from the center of the house, so no text paper would show through. I thought that PPA stuck to everything but it didn't like the silvered copper tape which is why I used the Tombow adhesive on the metal parts and PPA on the paper parts to save some $$.
And because I love smearing it around with my fingers. I admit it. Gooey can be fun! These lovelies are going in the mail to Susie tomorrow.
Which is Thursday!
posted by Wabbit at
2:21 AM
3 Comments:
Thanks for stopping by.
I like your house! I always thought that would be a fun swap to participate in.
Karla
What a fun place, Marilyn! I had chills and tears a few times reading about Bailey and thinking about the fact that my dad is moving out of the family house in Bailey and heading for Sunny CA... i think he'll just be here for the Winter so he can avoid the depression that comes every year with cabin fever. I hope we don't end up losing the property for good to his brothers' greed. Bailey holds so many special memories...
I love Jasper looking out the window and all of the little touches on your house!
Big Love!
Jul
What a lovely house and I especially like that 'doggie in the window'
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