Wow, it's done, it's rather cute, it's a bit of work, and yes, I'll do it again.
This is the Haunted House from the Happy Haunting Cricut Cartridge.
I have heard different times some of it days, some many house and some hours. Well, I started cutting out around 7 pm last night (while the Giants and Braves game was on), and I stopped working on this at 10:30, I did not work straight through, I stopped and made ice cream. I have one of those ice cream makers from Costco, it's the Cusinart machine, through in the ingredients and it runs for 30 minutes and you end up with 4 cups of fabulous ice cream.
I did exactly what each page did, one page at a time. It's why it takes so long, I went slow and just did what they marked. The dotted white lines are score lines, the tabs slip fairly easily into the slots. I'd dry fit before gluing, but it worked really well. Patience is the key. I did take a white gel pen and labeled the back side of each piece before cutting the next set of pieces, 1 for the house, 2 for the house, 8 for the porch, etc. This helped me keep them all organized. Don't mark the porch or the window balcony because the fold puts the back on the front and you can see the number, oops. The window cuts are weird, but they work. All the pieces on the first cut go on the first house, the cuts from the second part of the house go on the second part of the house and all the roof pieces. You'll figure it out it's easier than it sounds.
During that time I got all the pieces cut out, and picked out all the little black cut aways from the windows and the fences. I cut all the pieces at 7", I glued the vellum to the windows, let it dry (started the first batch of ice cream). For the entire project I used the Scotch Scrapbooker's two way glue, it's clear and it's a wet glue. Then I went and did all the scoring, put in the second batch of ice cream.
Then I went back and did all the small piece assembly. That was it for the night, I put the pieces on a tray and left them on the dryer overnight, in the garage, I have 3 curious kitty's who would have had to check out the little pieces.
Got up this morning and it took me an hour to assemble. It's a bit fussy, the designers did a good job with the building, but they got a little sloppy with the roof, and it works, but that was the struggle. I finally just held the pieces a little at a time until the glue set before moving to the next part of the roof.
I think I'm going to go back and add little witches and goblins around the doors, balconies, porches, etc. Just a little more would be nice. It's being lit by one of those Costco 3" battery candles, the candle is 5" tall and runs on double A batteries.
Any questions just ask. Thanks for looking.
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This is just an estimate.
All pieces were cut at 7"
To cut out, maybe 30 minutes. There are 8 12x12 pages to cut out. I used my Expression, 12x24 mat, 6 - 12x12 black cardstock, 65lb weight, and 2 vellum (I only had 8-1/2 x 11" vellum so I had to do 2 pieces of vellum. Otherwise, it would have all fit on one page). I laid the 7" pieces out on my Gypsy so I could get the least amount of paper. Some pieces take an entire page, others can be put together.
I'd guess 30 minutes to cut out.
30 - 45 minutes to score all the pieces
30-45 minutes to glue, let set long enough to let go of the pieces.
I let the glued pieces dry overnight.
An hour to do the assembly in the morning.
I was doing lots of other Mom and wife stuff while cutting so I didn't time myself. I basically started when the Giants/Brave game started Friday night, and was done at the end of overtime. I was doing stuff between steps.
Just go slow, follow the pages, they make sense if you don't look ahead. Just do each page just like it says.
