Paint a base coat of gesso over all three chipboard house shapes and let dry.

Add a layer of modeling paste to the houses and then use common household tools to scratch various marks in the gesso for added texture. The faux wood grain is caused by a plastic wood grain tool you can often find in the faux finishing section of the paint department at your local bog box home improvement store. Let dry.

Choose your favorite happy color to paint as the base layer.

If you’ve chosen magenta pink, as I have here, you may wish to “tone” it down by mixing a small amount of burnt umber paint with a few drops of water and use a wide paintbrush to quickly paint a layer of antiquing glaze over the houses. Immediately wipe the glaze from the surface with a paper towel, letting the brown settle into the crevices from your random mark making.

Choose a complimentary paint color and brush onto a rubber stamp. Stamp images on the corners and the sides of the houses. Add enough images for visual interest, but leave adequate “white” space as well as breathing room. Let the paint dry and feel free to stamp another layer of images on top of the previous with another color to add depth.

Choose your favorite quote or saying and write it onto the focal house shape. To emphasize the lettering, go over the letters with a white or silver pen. Add a few dots and doodles and slashes randomly throughout the houses. Personally, I’m not a big fan of my handwriting, but I’ve learned to embrace its imperfections. If you do not wish to write or doodle on your project, consider creating the quote on your computer and cutting and gluing it to your piece.

Cut images to fit inside the house’s windows. Glue to the back of the chipboard squares that come with the kit. These windows are normally discarded, but I used them as a sturdy surface to back my images and then taped the squares into place by running a line of washi tape behind the images on the backside of the houses.

Once you have your triptych finished with all its surface design elements, place them on a nonstick silicone craft mat. Mix up a full calibrated mixing cup of ICE Resin® (comes in the doming 4oz doming kit) according to manufacturer’s directions.

Use a disposable paintbrush (an inexpensive 2-inch wide one found in the paint section of your local home improvement store is great) and paint a sealer coat of ICE Resin over all three houses. Using a craft stick, drip some additional resin into the windows to give them a three-dimensional effect. Let dry six to eight hours until the surface is smooth to the touch and feels like glass.

To assemble your triptych, cut strips of heavy-duty packing tape to the back of each house shape, leaving a small gap between them where you will place the paintbrushes.

Place the paintbrushes onto the tape. Add some glue to the back of a ticket and glue over one set of the paintbrushes for an additional layer. Randomly add another ticket or two to the collage.

Market List:

• Tri fold Chipboard House – 7Gypsies
• Rubber Stamps – Dina Wakley
• ICE Resin®
• Acrylic paint
• Golden® Gesso
• Golden® Modeling Paste
• Old paintbrushes
• Tickets
• Heavy bodied glue such as Crafters Pick The Ultimate
• Images from your stash or purchased. Here I used Ephemera Papers Two from Spellbinders® Media Mixage™ with Susan Lenart Kazmer™
• Packing Tape