Holiday House

Here is the ornament I have been working on all weekend, as promised. The glue for each section took forever to dry, so this was quite time consuming to make. I'll have to find my hot glue gun and give it a try next time - hopefully the tip will be small enough to get into all the tight spots. If not, my vision of a village of pretty holiday houses will be going up in smoke.


I found the pattern for this ornament on the Better Homes & Gardens website. I was looking for easy holiday ornaments to make at the craft group I run for my clients at my day job once a month. While this one certainly isn't something I would make with them, I knew this was something I wanted to make as soon as I saw the photos. There are patterns for 3 different houses on the site. I used the pattern for the Cottage House. (Be sure to check their website for easier designs too, they had a lot of great stuff!)

The house itself is made out of DP from the My Mind's Eye Be Merry collection. I love this stuff and had to replenished my supply, I've been using it so much! The roof is a no-brand gray textured cardstock I picked up in bulk at AC Moore years ago, and the base is a piece of watercolor paper (picked because it is nice and sturdy). I drew in a pathway from the door and colored it in with copic markers (W1, E00, and E31). I then colored the rest of the watercolor paper with a YG91 copic marker to get an appropriate "ground" color for any that shows through all the "snow".

I punched 2 holes in the base and one in the roof before assembling, and ran a length of gold cord through them for the hanger. I used Elmer's glue to attach the house to the base, waited for it to dry, and then attached the roof the same way.

*note* As I mentioned before, the amount of glue needed to attach everything takes several hours to dry, so plan on working on other things in between steps.

I didn't have any of those nice pipe cleaner trees that they used on the samples on the BH&G website, so I did some brainstorming, and decided to try to make trees with the Martha Stewart branch punch. And it worked! I'm so glad I purchased that punch! You need 5 punches for each tree (I used SU Kiwi Kiss cardstock). I used a dab of 2-way glue pen at the tip of each punch to hold them together. After they were ready, I attached them to the base with yet more Elmer's glue.


I used the punch again for the wreath, but this time I snipped off each little section of the branch for my pine boughs. I used my circle punches to make a base for the wreath, and then glued each bough on with 2-way glue. I added some Christmas Red stickles for the berries.

Once everything was dry, it was time to add the "snow". I used white liquid applique, and applied several layers on the ground to get the depth of snow I wanted. I added more to the roof, and a bit over the door and window.

Once I was finished, it was pretty, but it still needed something. Hmmm... what to add. I know! Glitter! After all, what is prettier than sparkly snow? LOL! So I pulled out a paint brush and painted all of the snow with Angel Wings Shimmerz. I wanted a bit more depth on the trees, so they got painted with a bit of Sage Brush Shimmerz. You should see how this sparkles in real life! Gorgeous, if I do say so myself! (click on the photo to make it larger so you can get a better idea of how sparkly the snow is.)

Well that is all for tonight. Check back later for more holiday cards, and another, less intensive, ornament. :)