Fairy Cottage Finished, boy was that a lot of work!

I just finished up my Spongebob Squarepants pineapple house transformation, hehe and I think it worked out well :)  It's pretty cute now but to hear my daughter tell it-it's ruined!  Haha she's not happy it's no longer the home of one of her favorite cartoon characters :)  She keeps saying every time that she looks at it "I can't believe you did that to Spongebob's house!"  Now remember I started with this:

This was the exact piece I was working with.  I knocked off the top greenery and the vent pipe.  Then I splotch painted the whole thing in brown, green, and lighter brown and added the start of my natural materials like so:

And then last night I went crazy trying to finish it up so I could move on to my Harry Potter minis.  I rolled out a clay base and used an upside down bowl to cut a perfect round circle in the clay.  I took my tea light and pressed it into the spot I wanted my light to come up through and then used my blade to cut out the spot for the tea light.  Then I added a molded clay leaf edge with a clay mold I have and baked the whole thing very well for strength.  This I painted green and then pushed my tea light up through it .  Battery powered tea lights look like this:

The reason for putting it up through the clay is so the battery can be changed from the bottom of the completed piece.  Actually the whole tea light unit can be changed out if it should happen to burn out by accessing it through the bottom of the base.  Quite a good idea I think.  As you can see the tea lights aren't expensive to buy at a local hobby or craft store.  Replacement batteries can be purchased at Walmart or any other store like that.  Here's what I did to it last night:

I added a red door I made out of some scrap wood I had laying around, added festooned curtains in a tiny floral print to the windows, and decorated it as much as possible without overdoing it.  I even added a little window box with flowers growing in it out of an acorn top half that I cut in half.  Hard to tell but you can see the little red flowers on the side of the house and they are in that acorn top window box.  I hand-built the mossy twig bench as well made from a piece of bark from a very ancient maple tree in my yard that has survived for a vast amount of years and is completely hollow from the base all the way up to the tallest branches and still manages to have a full set of leaves.  Amazing! It currently houses a wood duck family in it's hollowed out core :) When I was a little girl I used to pull myself up to look into the side hole of the tree and imagine what sort of imagined creatures lived far down in that dark hole. I felt it must be magic to be all hollow and dead-looking inside and yet still be alive with leaves. I guess not much has changed, I still think it's magic :) When bark falls off it from time to time I always pick it up to use in crafts because it's so mossy and beautiful!  Here it is:

And here's more pictures of my project:

last night's dark picture in the photocube

Now you know why I have to go outside to take pictures!  Here's my outside shots:

When it's dark in the room and you turn on the tea light the light flickers as if there's a fire place inside the house that's burning!  It's so cute when the lights are on :)  Ok then, there's all I have for now!  This is currently for sale now in my etsy shop.  I put it on late last night and it already has hearts :)  That makes me feel good :)

Thanks to all of you who leave comments and I wish I could return the favor but my comments section is now working for some reason.  I'm not quite sure why other people can leave comments while others can't right now!  So frustrating!  As soon as that feature is fixed I will visit your blogs and leave comments in return.  For now all I can say is thank you for your support and kind words!  Please visit my partner in mini making's blog here at this address to see what she's cooking up that will soon be in the store:

http://19thdayminiaturessherrys.blogspot.com/

Thank you!  Big hugs from 19th Day Minis :)