Q...is for House?

That's right. Q is for house. The Queen's house. I suppose that makes this a castle - although it isn't really in the shape of a traditional castle. Then again, I suppose I'm not a traditional Queen.

If you remember, a few posts back I posted a picture of the house/castle after it had only been painted. (Aileen at Outside the Margins sells them - along with loads of other cool things. They arrive unfinished.) Here's a quick review of the beginning:
I originally bought two of these - this "house" shape and a rectangle. I'll introduce the rectangle when it isn't nekked.

After seeing the example Aileen has posted,
I was really stoked to order one. But when I sat down with it, I was stumped. The "rooms" are little - and even though I have no problem finding small things around the studio to include, my problem was more like what I should include. I wanted my adornments to be cohesive. After trying more than a gazillion combinations (yep, it was a gazillion on the nose - I counted), I chucked that idea and decided to just put things I like in it. Cohesive or not, this was a fabulous project to use up a lot of odds-and-ends. The best part? I got to go through my extensive collection of vintage beads and findings while searching for things to include. Sometimes, going through my collections gets my creativity flowing...and sometimes it's just a whole lotta fun!

And this is what I came up with...

You can click on the pictures for a larger view.

As you can tell, my house is not very cohesive. Or, I suppose it doesn't look very cohesive. To a normal person. Which I'm not. (Helllooo...I refer to myself as "Queen"...)

Most inclusions are vintage. (Does that make it cohesive? Or am I reaching?)

Here are a couple of close ups...

(Note: Everything is vintage unless otherwise stated)

Upper left room: Brass flower charm, brass cabachon with lots of little holes, resin oriental man carrying buckets of water.
Upper right room: Three vintage flowers I glued together to make one flower, two lemon charms in resin, and a brass hat with a propeller on it. (The propeller really spins!)
Left side between floors: Silver fairy charm. Not vintage.
Right side between floors: An angel in flowing robes - was a button. I removed the shank. Not vintage.
Lower left room: Steel butterfly with Perfect Pearls. (non-vintage) buttons, thread.
Lower right room: Glass leaf charm, (non-vintage) square mirror with (vintage) cabachon, silver woman charm, (non-vintage) plastic photo corner tipped sideways to resemble a crown, (vintage) gold rhinestones.
Da Bling Room: Loads of rhinestones glued...everywhere!, resin flower finding, polymer clay face glued to the center of the flower. Perfect Pigments dabbed on her face.

Other little tricks and techniques:
I took a copper charm that says "be true" and has a spiral, and stuck a little crown charm on it. The blue sea glass was covered in 4 coats of UTEE, then had OPALS embossing powders sprinkled onto the hot UTEE. (The first link to UTEE is a great article on using UTEE...The second link to UTEE will take you to YouTube.com, where Suze Weinberg shows more creative projects. Fun stuff!)Vintage bird I think is just adorable - I've named her Gerty the Birdie. Gerty has a vintage red rhinestone eye. She is in front of a small Peyote stitched piece I did awhile ago - and in front of that is "Create" in metal. I used 4-5 coats of UTEE on that as well.And in the final close up...the "q" (for Queen, of course!) is a glittered letter that I added Glossy Accents to. Adding that layer helps to keep the glitter on the letter. A silver crown charm I added tiny real rubies to - I had pulled those out of a very sad ring I had. The word "Inspire" is 3D card stock, and "Hope" is imprinted in copper. The yellow flower is a very cool vintage finding - and I added a small blue vintage flower to the center. The yellow flowers are a strange shape and I can't wait to use more of them. In front, sitting on the shelf or "floor", is just an organza (yellow) ribbon scrunched into a fun shape. There is also a black plastic tag that says "bliss" on the far left and a cute little lady bug button on the far right - neither are pictured in the above photo.

I know this post is long - but when I look at creations done by others, I want to know how they created different things...and now you know all the little bits-and-bobs I used on my Queen House.

Which this non-traditional Queen prefers to call her unconventional Castle.