Jo and I were excited when we learned that one of our favorite crafty and party suppliers, Oriental Trading Company, is hosting a “Best On The Block” craft contest. All you have to do to enter the contest is purchase one of OTC’s 3-D Chipboard Houses and decorate it using their scrapbooking products. Then send them a picture of your creation and cross your fingers. The winner will receive a Dream Desk Suite valued at $400. We would both love to have that prize! (See Official Rules)

We quickly ordered our chipboard houses and some supplies and put our imaginations to work. We have finished our houses and submitted our designs to the contest. It was so fun to make these houses, and we encourage you all to give it a try. Better hurry, though, because the contest ends May 29th!

Here are photos of our submissions, to give you some inspiration.

Chica’s house:

Sometimes you have to start from scratch to get the best house on the block, so this house is definitely a work in progress! I love home improvement, so I was inspired to show my chipboard house in the process of being built.

My first and most important technique was to use a craft knife to carve narrow strips out of the sides of the chipboard house, leaving behind a skeleton that looked like the framing of a house.

With the structure in place, I then turned to Carol Wilson’s Home Improvement Paper Pack to decorate the house. I backed the wood flooring paper with double-sided tape sheets and then cut it into thin strips, which I then applied to the studs of the house.

I then used the brick edging from one of the papers to cover the chimney. For the roof, I used black card stock for the roofing felt and then turned the drywall papers into shingles by cutting them into strips, notching the strips every inch, and then inking the edges with a black ink pad.

I then applied stickers from the kit and some little tool-shaped brads all over the house.

The finishing touch was the front door – the paper kit had a little die-cut panel that was the exact size of the door, and I used a brad for the doorknob.

Jo’s house:

Jo wanted to make a tree house out of hers since she never had one as a little girl and always dreamed of hiding out in the branches of an old oak tree. She painted a couple 3-D Haunted Tree cutouts brown for her base and nestled her chipboard house within the branches. This tree house comes complete with a rope ladder, swing and a Keep Out! sign that the little Garden Bugs seem to be ignoring!