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Creating a Christmas House

We're going to start out with this guy and eh? So we just created a little house and the first thing we're going to do is paint the base and my tip for that would be and actually I think one of the most important things is lining up the paper on the corners you're always going to have a scene there um and if you don't get it perfect, painting the base underneath in a color that matches you can see like right here on the corner um, I've painted under white, so you don't just see that brown and you won't notice it or see that as much. So for me, ah lot of these extra bits and pieces are hiding seems or little things that I couldn't get quite perfect, so we'll move this a little bit so we can see better and I've pre cut the pieces we wanted to create a cut template for this, but as we started working with the cut templates we made each one of these is just a little bit different and can be by like a quarter of an inch. So it was really frustrating at creating cut files and for us because ...

they just weren't working, so the easiest way to do it that I've found is to just cut the basic shape and it is six inches wide by five and a quarter tall both the front and the back and then what I would do is cut it, line it up and for me I would just put it right on the base like this because of the lips so right on the edge of the table and then I just traced where the windows and the door are from there I hand cut each window out using an exacto blade that sounds like a lot of work but they're all straight lines so it's actually just little dashes do it all in a row and then go and do the horizontal as well so it actually doesn't take too long but we want to to save a little bit of time in class from watching that we're going to start out though like I said by painting and I'm just going to use a phone brush for this and on this guy we're going to be painting could see I painted all the roofs white because we wanted it to look like snow um we don't get that in san antonio, but it still gives you that christmas eve feel and then we're going to add in the end some iridescent glitter again to give it that snow topped feel so we're going to paint the base white the roof white and the chimney red candice could you use white jess? Oh yes, yeah you could and in fact I'm used even martha stewart has like a white textured paint and it would already give it that feel of snow because it's kind of like a chunky texture to it on I think actually chalk paint would be really pretty on this it's well, I'm just using traditional kraft pain it's a little less expensive, but any of those other options lt's would work and in fact I have as we know from future former segments that I do really love glitter, so I have glittered the entire roof before too that's really messy but it's also really pretty, so I'm just painting it white the paper machine really soaks up paint, so you're going to need a lot more pain than you might think just to warn you on that one um and I actually and you can see here I don't mind it being a little bit streaky and not solid if I wanted it solid, I would have painted a second coat, but I actually felt like it gave it more of that home made nineteen forties kind of custom feel and I liked that it looked like snow would not completely perfect on the roof um so think fred, this house, we'll just keep going on that and the important parts to plain out are just to make sure that you get under the eaves don't forget that part and on the front and don't worry about it if you get it on the house because again that's just going to cover up your seems so it's okay I'm just getting in all these little corners and painting the top I don't know why I wish we had snow in san antonio but we just never get it but I so I like to imagine I like to add that uh all turn down the air conditioning at christmas so pretend so I can use my fireplace once a year. All right? So we're getting there on the roof again it's not perfect painting and I love projects like that, ok? We're gonna let that dry a little bit it just getting around the chimney and I'm just smoothing out a little bit and you can see on this one we ran white trim, so I dio wanna put just a little bit of whites on the insides of everything all right, let's, move on while this drive so we're not just watching paint dry way are going to get the corners of this. So this is what I mean by the corners we don't need to get for the whole entire building because it's going to be covered by paper, but those corner edge is where the seams might show it just helps to make it look a little bit more seamless by adding in whatever the base color is so and are based on this one is white as well for this snow, so I'm just gonna paint that as well. The glitter and trim is going to be great at hiding a lot of my mistakes as we go along and I don't normally craft and pretty dresses. I would probably be wearing an apron. Normally, I'm super messy. I even have, like, paint close to avoid, so just getting in those corners and sometimes I finished the back of these, and sometimes I don't. It depends on where I think I'm going to be displaying it if I want to display it, um, like on a mantle, and I know no one's ever going to see the back of it, and I'll probably just paint the back instead of cutting paper and lining it all up. If I think it might be like a centerpiece or on a table where the back is going to be seen, then I'll completely finish the back as well, just a little time saving technique there, okay? Now one thing I want to play now is depending on the look of the house you're creating you may or may not want to paint the interior so on this house because all the windows are open you can see in from every level I've painted the inside white as well you can see it looks much brighter in there than in the other two or haven't painted so I do prefer that um just to kind of add some brightness to and really if you're going to leave the windows open like this you could fully decorate the inside of you thought people would look in there I like to put lights in so like battery operated lights right now target has like those little wire battery operated lights for three dollars in the dollar section shadow for target I spend a lot of time there when I'm not crafting so I'm not going to paint the entire inside of this so that we're not watching it but I would I would paint the base and each of the walls so that when we look through especially this one because it is so open I'm just going to do the back wall for now and you can see it really does like just so got that pain and take a ton of paint way more than you think it would and actually jessa would help that like it would seal it you know so that you um if you did want to use another kid coat it would kind of be like a primer and I was surprised at how well the paper machete took the moisture of the paint none of these have really warped or had any problems I will tell you though that because they are each like a little bit different you have to keep the right top with the right building because I got them mixed up and then they didn't fit correctly so watch out for that if you're making multiples and this is really fun project to view with your girlfriends or sisters are your kids because everybody can kind of decorate it in their own way and and but if you're using one collection they're all still going toe look great together so no one can like make a creative mistake it's still all gonna look nice on and it's really fun to do together okay we're now going to start applying the paper and again this is paper from market street I'm actually using the backside on I was super smart and picked a stripe which makes it one hundred times more complicated than picking kind of a random pattern because I like to have all my stripes lined up just like I would like wallpaper or something at home so as you're cutting the paper just make sure when you cut like the paper for the eaves that you're doing it on the same a piece of paper so that the lines will then line up right? So I literally the cut was right there and that's where the seam of the building will be and they will line up exactly so for these little pieces, what I like to do is just take a plain piece of white computer paper and I just press it right in and then with my finger make a score line for a little template because every triangles just a little bit different than the last, and that makes it really difficult. So that is the simplest way I found to get the correct triangle shape and you can see they fit just right in there, but we're going to start actually let's start with that because it's almost dry and I like to use much podge for this project as well again because it really gives you a good seal on dh the's air coming in and out of storage every year for your tresses as decorations. We wanted to like last and have a nice strong finish, so I like to use mantra podge for this part of the project. All right, so we're just going to smooth that right out and again the nice thing about much punches that it can it can get on the painted areas it's just going to dry clears, so I'm not too worried about that more and there was going to smooth out because I don't want it to me. Super okay, now, the's, do not meet perfectly in the middle there's actually like a little bit of a gap and that's ok, because we have troops that's going to cover that up, but that is another place that I probably would have painted a little bit white just to kind of cover it up. And so I'm gonna dab a tiny bit of white paint in there just to cover that up, and I'm going to cover the top of this with mon trudged to it's, going to give it a little bit of a glossy finish because this is lester and lodge podge, and I'm not ask for paper towels as well. These are things that you don't think you need ahead of time until you're crafting till you're into the thick of it. All right, so now we have our two front panels and they're in there pretty well, so we're gonna let that start to dry, and I'm gonna add to the front because I think it's starting to dry on here. So again, I pre cut these I just trace them by putting it right up on the building and tracing from the inside, and it lines right up, so I'm gonna do much patch will ray over the building and here's, one of the things that I actually like about making it look like it's knowing some of the mod podge, I'll just kind of, like, stick into the windows and it will dry pretty clear, but it'll look kind of like little mounds of snow in the windows, so I'm not going to actually smooth those out or fix that because I like it, and we're just lining that right up, smoothing that down, and I again, I really love having paper towels for projects like this so that I can really kind of press it down, but I'm not like getting the mantra pudge on my hands and then spreading it like all over the paper, you're going to get a little bit more right in here. So we are looking pretty good on the front, and now we have the front of her house coming up a little bit on the corners, on the corners of a part that are probably going to get the most abuse and come up the most just kind of reapply. And a lot of times, the mod podge just doesn't seem to have here quite as well to where the paint is, you have to act like a little extra mod podge and near just so like march, bostian just so um I don't know I haven't tried that I imagine actually it's just because the much partisan soak in to that as much so it would probably have the same issue either way okay, so our side panels we've already cut as well and I did try to cut them as you can see so that my stripes lineup so in general you can get a lot more out of one paper than you can when you have a pattern like a stripe or a particular like floral that has to line up with this it took a couple of sheets and served just one because I wanted my lines to match exactly so I couldn't just use random parts of the paper um so just something to be aware of when you're picking a pattern for something like this the stripes are adorable I love them which is why I'm ok with the extra work but it definitely is extra work to have a pattern like that so we'll just much padre in here there's something like sort of comforting about creating like your own little village that you would want to live in right and it's a lot cheaper than your own house and I kind of like to create like the little town I would like to live in if there was a real thing like in my mind it's like a stars hollow like from gilmore girls you know, like it's fictional that I wish that it existed but also they would have to be a target maybe next time I'll make up my mind by like, warehouse or something all right, so now we have our side piece in the back it's really easy just don't make the same mistake that I made which is it is just slightly collar in the back then in the front because it doesn't have the lift to rest on so this is just a little short but that's ok, you know, line it up right there and I can just paint the bottom white so it doesn't show up and I probably wouldn't normally much podge while the paint's still lead, but for today well, go ahead and do that all right? And we'll just line that up along, so get a nice straight line today is that paper towel to smooth it out and I could continue putting much podge all over the outside because we don't have a lot of separate to drive and see how it's still drying here so it's not going to be completely clear so I'm not going to march pudgy outside, but if you wanted, can you see how it's starting to get like a glossy finish to it? If you wanted that shine, you could do that you can also buy matt much podge if you didn't want the shine but you wanted to like really seal it in and then it'll give you a more matte finish okay, this is where you want to start to just be careful if you're not putting lodge hodge on the outside to really kind of get it into that corner of the front paper but not on it line up my stripes let's move it out and I could see that the back pieces coming up just a little bit on the corner someone put in a little bit more glue there and I love this piece is just a little bit long summon a trim it right off with an exacto blade, so making a little bit longer is better than cutting out a little bit short because you can always removed but it's hard to put it back. All right, so there is our basic house I decided on this one that it would be really fun tio add a different color to the a little easy on the side and so I'm using from the six by six paper pad the front is a foil, but the back is this doctor and I wanted to stick with the same color family that just have kind of a fun different patterns, so we're going to put that right in and I have found on this part the easiest way to do it is to just turn your paper diagonal so few you know you have your spare paper stick it right in and then cut the corner super easy way to get the right shape candice how does the heat done work with the paper machine does it um like it to dry it faster? Uh I would be careful of that that might kind of like start to soften it a little bit the fibers in the paper but I think if you were doing it lightly it would help yeah, what I kind of do a lot of times when I'm working on these I would paint all three at the same time so I do all the painting than I do all the cutting than and so I sort of batch the basic like base of them since they're all so similar and then decorate them all after that as opposed to doing one at a time just because I think it's a lot faster just sort of batch um create and that would be like another fun thing if you had a group of people like someone is making all three of these someone's making three of those so you're just doing the exact same thing and then you just trade houses so I am using the red satin um tartan red for martha stewart for the red on this and it matches the line really, really well if you want to know the exact paint color and I'm just gonna paint the chimney I'm using a smaller brush for this so I can get right into thea edge and I would obviously be a lot more careful um rather than quick while I was doing things like this because we know nobody wants to see red snow that would not be a good good sign of your neighborhood and just I like this um bubbled edge just because we are working with angled edges said just a little bit easier but as faras brushes air concerned for jobs like this um if I am sure if I was a real painter I want really high quality brushes but again I just kind of use cheap craft brushes because I don't need perfection and it's not gonna be using them over and over again so that's one of the places where definitely try and save a little money but if you're painting a lot than having a set of high quality brushes comes in really handy all right, so now we have our little chimney and I would probably d'oh two coats on the red just to make sure that we get like a nice solid of red um as you can see before and I missed a little bit of snow something to come back in with the white on a few of the sides there you go all right? So we've got our house I almost just held it by the journey that's what I mean by wearing, needing to know we're here in april? Um okay, and we're starting to line up so the parts where I have had the hardest, so these roofs don't match and as you can see it's not going to line up exactly on this one and because I used the right one in the right place, it lines up perfectly, but on this one, it didn't, and that's why we have that true, that runs right between so I would love to have make it exactly the same, but in this case, I'm might run my term just straight a crossed this'll it'll banner straight across, as opposed to you're a bigot to kind of hide that. So trim it's, your best friend when you're in hurry and crafting so let's, move on to our next step, which is exactly what I was just talking about. I then go in and start to add trim where I noticed little edges or things that aren't perfect from my end, perfect paper cutting and painting. So one other little thing before we start that. I just got to be really fun, and it is just a little detail to add, like, another little pattern in the iv, so I would do that as well. We're not going to do it right now just because it will take some extra time, but I think it's really fun to just add tiny little details in like that because to me that's, what takes it from oh, I could buy that at a boutique two it really like, has a turn of detail and looks homemade. I know, I know a lot of times people say homemade as a bad thing, and I think that's like an amazing thing, so I'm ok, so I'm going to let that heat up for just a second and my base is still just a little bit what? So we don't want to add, and so while we're waiting for that, I'm going to start to work on the banner piece that you see right there on the top. So again, these air just sort of like we did with the dia rama's, we've just cut little tiny triangles, and we're going to glue them on to a piece of baker's twin and so I like to think of these houses as just like, as if I were decorating at home myself. What would I put here? What would I want to decorate the outside of my house with banners I'm always making manners on and so that's what I would do and I would just grab a couple of pieces of the smaller patterns or any scraps that I have lying around I probably would not he was a whole sheet for this just because I don't like to waste things all right? So I'm gonna cut three at one I will just cut a strip and the length that I want first I think for these there about half an inch tall you want to think in proportion to the scale of the house that you are working with s o I wouldn't make big huge banners that don't make sense on a little tiny house we're just gonna cut some triangles and that's super easy because I just do a v back and forth you know we have our bankers so I find it easier just to do this with a hug glue again because I'm impatient and that's just a really quick thing to do you could also if you do have your sewing machine now and you're really great at selling just so but they're pretty tiny so I'll be difficult I'm going to just find piece of our twine you know have any l frightening news that later but I would just um haku those right on to the twine but I want to go ahead and show you now that our glue guns a little bit hot how tio add the trip so I, um, mentioned yesterday with the die aromas I always like to start, um right in the center and moved to the outsides as opposed to like having a seam line in the front because I started at an edge so I'll always start right in the middle so I'm going to start with the door and I just feel like the scenes he's never look super pretty, so I like to trim those out joe does he would like with the sewing project or anything else where you have a scene that doesn't look super great and all I do is just start measuring and bending wherever those same lines are and this is just the little pipe cleaners that you confined in the kid's section of any craft or hobby store we're gonna start glowing and I just run right along the basis the tiny beads her paint still lead so way may not quite seal and just press it right into the corner to keep it down low and I feel like these things the base is important and we want it to look good, but I feel like this is where they're really like detail in the house sort of comes to lie, then it starts to look really beautiful and another thing I always think of when I'm at the stores and I'm looking for trends or things that I want to use in projects like this is I always um think about like, was it around when my grandma was shopping for crafting supplies and if it was then I know that it sort of fits in that vintage feel pipe cleaners definitely we're so they're ok so you can see as we go around we're really starting tio add that little special kind of sparkle all right? And I would continue doing that until I got all the way around and so now my seems going to be right there no one's going to be looking right there to really like inspect it but they would around the door so that's why I always start from center out just like you would like when you're doing upholstery or something like that on the areas that you know people are going to look at the most make sure those air seamless as you can but I would just keep continuing until I went all the way around. So the next thing I want to show you is how we created the wreath it's one of my favorite parts of this one uh we took two pipe cleaners and just twisted them around together because I wanted it to be a little bit thicker and then I just started to sort of form the shape and I just measured the space that I had to know how big I wanted the wreath to be right in here so you can see it's starting to sort of take shape, and I would just keep twisting that around in and out of the circle, just like they would make, like a regular, great fine reef at your craft store, and this is going to give it some good structure and integrity, too, as you store it, it will be a lot harder to kind of get bent out of shape, and I just took the backs in the back, and I'm like a perfect little reform, and then I really, really love this trim. Um, I think this is a michael's trim, but it's a tiny red pom pom on wire, and you can kind of see that they're on the reason I love that is because it's sort of wines around perfectly to look like you added, like little berries, but without having to add like each individual bomb bomb in there. So it is going to cut a piece of that and a twist that right around as well, and I'm interested so that all of the me back all of the pom poms air in front, of course, and we'll glue the first one down right where we want it to go and then the rest should sort of just twist and hold in place because it it's wire, which is nice, kenneth, you're talking a little bit about storing, and somebody online had a question as to how what's the best way to store these when the holiday is over, and so I keep all my christmas in, like plastic bins, I just find that that's like the best way I don't have a ton of storage at my house, so I am sort of selective and what I keep in what I make each year, and this is one of the things that I do keep just because you put a lot of work into it, and I think there's so pretty, and they're fun to add to every year we make anyone with the kids and, um, whatever new crafting line we have out, um, but so I would store it in a plastic bin, and I wrapped them each and a piece of bubble wrap and that's about it. I mean, I just make sure nothing heavy is on top of it, so they usually are at the top of the box as opposed to like the bottom, and then I'm just going to do a dab of glue in the back to secure the wire and cut off the excess and actually kind of adorable, oh, so if I get decorate my real house with tinsel around the edges and a picture diary I would but in texas it rains in the winters so wouldn't work out so well can you imagine someone should make that giant tinsel I guess they kind of dio but not not as big a zit would be proportionately teo I want like giant alright lately so cute right on dh then I took just to take it up one step I'm one of our brad's which already comes with the little flag on it so I don't have the best handwriting I'm going to let them take care of that for me and a lot of times on a prat on a project like this um if I'm using a brad rather than like punch through I'll just cut off the back of the brad and then hot glue it on so I'm just skilling I wire cutters up here but I would use wire cutters for that but scissors work fine it's just you do damage to your sisters gotta treat your sister's mo I'm leaving just a tiny bit to sort of fold over but otherwise that sticks out we don't want it to show um I suppose you could punch through the house and put it all the way through and it would make it extra secure but that's a lot of extra I mean I love crafting but even I have my stopping points, right? Okay, just gonna push that right, and there we go. So we would keep adding trim and extra pieces until we feel like it's a decorated as we want to get. Um, I definitely would add trim across that center scene because it is bugging me, but we can hide that really easily with some trim for this. For the roof of this, I've used another pom pom trim that just has a porting on the edge. Um, from hobby, let me and most craft stores will have an even fabric stores will have great pom pom trend in different sizes. So in this case, I'm in actually add the pom pom trim across the front because I want to hide that I do not like it, and I would just keep continuing around to add that on, and I'm pulling it tight because that has a little bit of give and I don't want it to get loose as the years go on. Can you see how it starts to really hide that seeming that mistake as we put that him? So I would just continue that around and then instead of maybe adding the banners, um, across here than I would put something of here, like a crossed in here and the little leave, so we just sort of switched about the last thing with this is that we've added a little flag or, if any old to the roof, which I think is really cute and again as just a pipe cleaner and one of the flags from the mai christmas on market street lines. So they actually have tons of options of little flags in here and hold this up so you guys can see it. But tons of pieces in this on day, we're really, really fun for decorating projects like this, um, or the dia ramos or anything christmas present love among christians problem, and they say all sorts of things. So whether you want, um, a merry christmas or like a season's greeting, you could do that. Um, but because the flags only had one size, I went ahead and cut pattern paper to go on the back and give it that, like blowing in the wind sort of feels so I didn't keep them exactly the same. I've actually glued them. So one goes behind the other, and that is how I completed that house.