The Mouse Market

Yesterday, I was up to my elbows in craft paints—my kind of weekend. 😌

The project? I have a book signing on May 4 for my romance novel, and I needed to make a decorative box to hold these nifty four hallows cards that I made. People will get to draw a card to discover which hallow—the sword, chalice, pentacle, or wand—they need most right now, and originally, I was going to put the cards in a regular ol’ cardboard box with glitter on it.

But then, I spied this cute little cardboard cottage in my closet, something I’ve been meaning to decorate for, oh…a decade now? The roof comes off, making it the perfect little holder for my four hallows cards. Boring box, begone! Let the decorating begin!

I started with a base coat of white craft paint before adding a few coats of daffodil yellow.

I knew I wanted to capture a homespun, DIY vibe, so I ditched the ruler and eyeballed brownish yellow lines to mimic clapboard siding. I also dabbed green paint on all four sides to create bushes.

You can see the little chimney, which was created with brick-orange, on top of which I used the same mustard-yellow clapboard paint to create the brick lines. Later on, I filled that empty chimney square with black paint. Oh, and the bushes obviously needed flowers!

Next up, I painted the roof. In the bottom right, you can see the decorative paper that became the “cobblestone” walk. I’ve had that paper for ages and was happy to finally put it to good use.

To the backside of the windows, I taped squares of tracing paper to hide the bowl of four hallows cards.

Initially, I made a little red door but didn’t love it as much as I’d hoped, so it got swapped out for a blue door. Little rectangles of foam sheet formed the window boxes, to the back of which I glued painted and cut-out flowers.