Moving right along: Bricking

 And so it is now time to cover up the ever so irking upside down siding!!!  <-----  Do you see it??

I used a homemade paper mache clay recipe and then used a fondant stamp to push the bricks into the clay.  Really putting the clay on the house took longer than making the bricks!




No more upside down siding! Yay!





After the brick laying was finished I went back in with a knife and cut the mortar lines just a little bit deeper in a few places.  I was hoping this would give the effect that they brick was old enough that dirt had built up around a few of the other bricks.




Here's the house with they clay on... I let it dry for a good two weeks because the clay has water in it and I didn't want any chance of mold if I painted it too early!

After waiting to weeks I put a really dark bast coat on because I wanted the mortar cracks to show boldly.

Here you can see how the brick wraps all the way around the front to the front door.  It was touch getting the clay just right under that porch.

I then started layering the colors for the bricks one at a time.  I just used a paper towel to dip into the paint.  I figured a paper towel would be more flexible for me than a sponge.

Color order was: Dark grey (for the mortar), white, red, brown, and then another light layer of white on top.

Here's the finished product with the wood cleaned up a bit. 

Question time:  Do you think the bricks make the shingles look out of scale now?  I dunno... it's been bugging me and I have an idea of what to do about it but I wanted to get your opinions as well!

Thanks for looking!  Will take a big picture of the progress so far with my nice camera soon!

Ara