Crafty Friday: The Box House

I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get this posted. I woke up this morning with a cold, and didn't feel like doing much of anything today, but I finally made myself get out of bed and get to work. Hopefully this craft will be worth the wait.

To be honest, I'd been telling my children that we were going to build a box house for months now, and I had them gathering boxes all that time. What it amounted to was a big box trash pile in our game room for that time. We had so many boxes and it looked so bad that I started throwing things away thinking we would never get to this project. I'm glad we didn't give up on it, though because I love what it has become.

Here's what you need:

-a ton of boxes, all difefrent shapes and sizes
-a hot glue gun
-packing tape
-scissors
-markers

Extra embellishments we used:
-straws
-moss
-pipe cleaners
-construction paper
-fabric/felt
-string
-golf tees
-styrofoam balls
-old jewelry

We started by cutting out windows and doors in some of our boxes, and drawing windows and doors on other ones.

Then we did a "dry fit" so to speak, stacking and arranging boxes. You need to have a few bigger boxes at the bottom to give the structure a sturdy foundation. We used a combination of packing tape and hot glue to attach the pieces together.

Then, it was an "arrange as you" go format to figure out the layout as we built up, making sure that we added any text, or drawings onto the boxes before we glued them to the structure. Finally, we added all kinds of embellishments including trees made out of styrofoam balls, golf tees, and moss, balconies out of cardboard, a clothes line in the alley, a mail box, a trash can, stairs, window boxes pieces of jewelry used as signs or garden stones, and a flag pole and lamp post out of straws. 

[Wasn't it sweet that my daughter put my business at the top of the structure. It was all her idea...I promise!]

We had more fun figuring out all of the tiny details, and that's the other reason I'm posting this so late. As I'm typing this, Audrie is still working on embellishments. I don't know if we are ever going to quit. Who knows, by the time this baby's born, our whole game room might consist of a box world with it's own government, indoor plumbing, electricity. That reminds me...where did I pack the Christmas lights?

Happy crafting!

xo

nessa dee