Haunted Houses

I got a bee in my bonnet (or maybe I should say a bat in my belfry) a couple weeks ago to make a haunted house. I didn’t have the funds to buy another cartridge to make the house so I used my Winter Woodland Cricut cartridge instead. I figured a haunted house is just a house that’s spooky looking, right?   I didn’t think that regular cardstock would be sturdy enough for a house so I bought a couple pieces of poster board. I found some that was black on one side and orange on the other at our local grocery store. I used the orange side for the inside house and the black for the exterior.  Since I was feeling ambitious I decided on the 2 story house with dormers. Using my 12” x 24” cutting mat, I cut the house out at width 23.43 and height 10.23 setting the depth on 6, speed on 3 and pressure on 5. I cut it twice. I used some brown cardstock I had on hand for the roof. I ran it through my Texture Boutique with a Sizzix embossing card I thought looked vaguely like a roof pattern. I used a Cuttlebug embossing card that looked like wood for the door. 

The roof of the Two Story House

Even using the directions for building the houses in the back of the Winter Woodland booklet it was a little confusing to put together, especially the dormers and the stoop. But I just kept going back to the pictures and experimenting until it made sense.

*TIPS*: Use Aileen’s Tacky Glue. It holds better than Tacky Tape; don’t permanently attach the roof until after you get the dormers on.

I really like the way the orange sort of glows through the windows, but it still needed some character.

I used the Pumpkin Carving Cricut cartridge to cut some ghoulish embellishments. The ones I wanted to use all had circles around them so I just snipped the circles off after cutting. In a few instances I had to do a little free hand cutting to keep the shape. 

I liked the look of the first house so much I decided to make another one. This time I chose the single story house with the round window in front. I used the same materials and cut it at 19.77” x 6.20”. The door was too small at this size and I had to re-size it to 9.93 x 7.15. The hinge goes on the inside, but I glued the hinge outside so the door could open and you could see the giant cat. I also had to cut the door off at the bottom so it would open over the step.  Using Pumpkin Carving once again, I cut out the bats and the ghost, using it as smoke coming from the chimney.

One Story Haunted House

Won't they make great table decor for our Halloween Party?

 I am going to enter these in some of my favorite challenges! Stop by and see all the great projects everyone is doing.  StuckOnUSketches Creepy Crawly DieCut Challenge

                            Decorate to Celebrate Halloween Challenge

                            Just-a-scrappin Halloween 3-D Special Challenge

                            MCC-Challenge #1-Halloween