Lessons

Lesson Info

How to Alter the House to Make a Chapel & Bakery

So let's start with the chapel I've already painted it so I don't have to paint it again on dive already pre cut all the pieces and parts which is often so I really really love the chapel but if you didn't want to chapel you could put a synagogue in on that you could put like a completely different you could put another business and I could do in my mind's eye for my village you could add anything you want but the chapel I feel like it's kind of an iconic like nineteen fifties you're going to see it in a lot of the little villages that you would buy vintage eso what we defer this what's really fun is you can alter the shape of the front of these I don't it didn't occur to me for a long time so like a lot of my little setups we're like the same house over and over again and then I realized well I could just cut into the paper machete itself to create any shape I want and I don't know I wasn't doing that so I started just sort of playing with different shapes and really all you need to d...

o is cut the paper into the shape you want and then with your exacto knife when you put it in you just cut out that shape and then it's gone so and it because you want to cut too high into the base or sorry high into the top or low into the base but the structural integrity of it isn't in the windows anyway so if you cut those out it's gonna be perfectly fine and so that's what I've done on this little chapel the easiest way to do it is actually to trace so I made the paper first and I just cut out the windows in any shape I wanted and then I took the first shape after I cut it and put it on the other side so they'd be perfectly symmetrical question it kind of looks like there's just a solid paper in those windows could you just take it and put a solid paper instead of god you could so I added vellum to this in the back so that when I put the lights in it actually lights up like stained glass on dh if I you can see because I hate cutting out those little tiny windows I did not cut them out of the chapel or the little patisserie but I could I thought about cutting those out and putting like different colors of elements so it really did look like stained glass when it was lit up but I love the poke it off so uh but if it was solid paper yeah you could just fully line it and then put another layer of paper with the windows over it and not make it really easy um absolutely and the patisserie you can see, we've just cut out larger square windows, and I did that because I hope to eventually, like at a little table with kate right inside. So that's, what you see when you're looking at it hasn't happened yet, but someday okay, so I'm just traced the windows and what you really want to look for with this is I'm actually going to cut outside the trace line because I wanted to be a little bit farther out then my paper, so I don't like see the edges right behind it and just starts sighing right into it again. I know technically with an exacto blade, I should be like cutting away for myself, but for being risky today for being crafting rebels keep cutting along that line. And the nice thing about this, too is because I'm cutting slightly outside the lines you're not going to see it and it doesn't need to to be perfect because no one's going to be able to see it on ly I will know that it was messy and you could probably even use scissors for this because it's just a really a simple cut there's not a whole lot of points to it, basically, I'm just here's my little window shape, so now when I put my building back it's gone so I have to do it a little bit wider and that's I didn't do quite as outside the lines as I should have because can you see how there's just a little bit of ed showing and I don't like that I'd rather have that go away you could also paint it and that would help it kind of just disappear as you go along um but I'd rather just get rid of it just a few seconds of extra work and it will look so much better so it's starting tio get a lot better a little bit more appear and I think scissors will be easier so I would do that on both sides and then the vellum you don't really need to cut to a window size you just need it to fit on the inside so for the vellum I just trimmed that right down tio slightly smaller than the friend, which was six bye five and a quarter so I just do it like a quarter interest smaller than that I'm such a messy crafter all right way are going to go five way smaller than six so then I can just kind of slide it in and then I would just cut out where the door is, so when I put this back over then we're just seeing development site um I don't trim not just a little bit slightly smaller so that it could be nice and flat in there, and I just attach it with blue dots or hot glue at the top. Um, so that then when the light shines through, we get that really pretty look, and that is how I would do the front of the chapel. The other piece that's really important on the chapel is obviously the steeple, and we have given you a cut file for that, so I've created a file that makes it really, really easy to fix that. So this is what the piece looks like after it's cut and you can trace it and cut it by hand. Um, but it's really easy with the salutes who've got all four of our steeples and what we've actually done then is wired a tiny bell right in there to make a bell tower for our chapel, and these little bells they have in the christmas sucks shin every year of any kind of crops or so I've just taken wire and twisted it right onto the bell to be able to hang it, and I'm just going to create the tower part right now. So we've painted everything white on the chapel and then what? We're going to d'oh to make sure that it's totally correct because, again, they're all just slightly different is give ourselves increase marks. So kind of market that first one and I like to sort of score this just by using my ruler slowly move that for you so you can see so it just kind of lined it up straight and then run it along the edge and run my finger along and then I'll do the same thing on the next one I'm not folding at all the way, yeah, until I get around the base so that I just have like that basic shape as I hot glue, so the first thing I would do is hot glue the wire and the bell to the tip of one of them so that it's already on there as we go along and this is kind of tricky you can do it with two people, but you couldn't do it individually with well, all right, so you just run a tiny tiny beads on the inside of hot glue and then you have to quickly hold it together and I start at the base and then get to the a very big point top online that right up and so my hot glue dry just a little bit of the base before I got it that's ok? I can just run over it he did back up, but I do recommend doing it from the inside as opposed to the outside, so it doesn't show as much and I just hold that in place for a second and you're going to keep doing that with each edge I'm not going to say I'm a creative genius for thinking about this but I mean that's pretty brilliant and I'm totally taking credit because my sister in law actually designed this cut file I was like I think we could like make a steeple somehow like maybe we'll just like wrap some paper around and she like engineered it like precisely imperfectly for everyone to use and kenneth one question came in on what type of lights do you put in? Are they battery full to vote is or string lights you could put battery operated votives and and I would probably be light enough to actually she's creative genius because I'm using the little wired christmas lights that you could buy they've used to selma at restoration hardware for like a million dollars but now they have him a target for three in the dollar section of target but yeah like if you went to costco or somewhere and bought those little votives those would be awesome okay so then I'm just going to wrap this final point around and this is why I didn't pull that because you can see this one is not perfectly square some of this sort of smooth it out as best I can to sort of line it up and then I'm going to seal this just the top first ok, so we've got the top, the bottom is still not sealed because I wanted to be a little bit looser and I'm going to place the seam in the back where people aren't gonna look really rapid around secure it, make sure that it's exactly where I want it to be and the card stock that actually comes in this kid. I don't know if you can tell on camera but is glimmer so has, like a little bit of snowy shine to it. So right now this kind of looks like a mess because there still is, like a lot of hot glue kind of coming out of the steeple, and so what I would do after that is just take a small pair of scissors and sort of just clip off the extra little like ghosting kind of pieces of chocolate, but we're going to add some extra glitter and snow to it and that's going to hide that as well as we do that. Okay, so we're getting pretty close and we would just have our little bell tower now to hide that seem we've added these little pearls and these air actually sticker they came by, I kept the packaging just so you could see what it looks like from the scrapbooking section of michael's that they are self and he said little, um, pearls, what a tangled up and they come in really handy for projects like this and you don't normally store them without a ribbon some do that and I would just pre measure before he took off did he said how much I need there and they are connected together too, so you don't want to place each individual it's like a strand of half pearls and again I'm going to start in the front and go to the back, so I'll start with the middle of them now that I've measured them, I'm following my scene around to the back, so trimming their like your best crafting friend when you're messi like me and I probably just after I get it like exactly where I want to place a couple little dots of hot glue just to sort of extra secure but me all right, so on the base of the chapel and I want to take the extra time to put all of the pieces on, but obviously I wouldn't hear all the pieces. The thing about this pattern this is from our cozy lines. You can see that it is more of like the traditional red and green on the back so we could have a plaid chapel I suppose if we wanted, but we're not going for that look today, so we've just cut all of our pieces and again, this is another pattern that I really like line up where the columns of the words go just because it would feel districted if there were different columns in different places and the one thing I want to point out for these corners is you can't just stick up stick in the corner because you'd have the writing going diagonally so you do have to sort of um cut a separate piece that wastes a little bit more paper but to get there writing the correct direction the last thing I want to show on the chapel though or talk about is just how we've created the little garland for the doorway and how we've lined the windows and the trimming pieces so these air actually are gold puffy stickers and they perfectly line up with these diamond sort of shaped to windows and then the snowflakes but perfectly right in the iv so every use two sheets of these just to give me that really pretty gold look we lined the base with those pearls again and then all of our like pine trimming comes from like a nine foot garland that I just cut tiny little pieces off so one of those like really cheap looking garlands on that I think it looks really beautiful here and to add in little berries and extra decorations we've used our enamel stocks so we've just added those in I didn't even hot glue them they're just really stuck right in there um and they've stayed perfectly well for the trimming on this house we've used some more of that really pretty card stock and I have some flat white here that it would be really really beautiful teo use some more of the glimmer my colors card stock just to give it that snowy shiny effect and it's really pretty when it's lit up and this is just a punch from martha stewart so confined it at any craft store that carries martha stores supplies line it right up lunch and a lot of times I'll do it from the bottom so that I can line it up exactly right turn it over but it creates that really pretty lace this would be like amazing on a scrapbooking page or card teo and then I just cut right along right along the top two just add in just an extra piece to glue it to each of the eaves so just a really a simple way of adding some beautiful detail and not spending the money on even more trims and that is our chapel on and we're going to move on to one of my favorite which is the patisserie because who doesn't like a bakery um and who we wanna have unnamed prancer participate because we're christmas here and we've added a lot of just really fun detail on this so in this house are bakery we've cut larger windows because like I said, I wanted them to sort of look like a display window that you would in the shops I didn't want to get too wide because then we start getting into like the structure and I was worried that it would start to bend a little bit so we just made them extra tall in this case um again we'll show you on the base of that I can see how we've painted all of the edges red so that way if the card stock are the pattern paper doesn't wrap around perfectly then it isn't a problem because already matches and the nice thing about the dots are they don't have to line up perfectly they're not perfect a perfect dot they're kind of sporadic sounds exit a lot easier on you as you're applying and you didn't see on this one I didn't even quite finish out the back because I knew that this was going on my mantle's not too worried about that, but I wanted to show you a little bit about how we created some of these little elements like our open sign um and how we've added in this sign own friend so we actually have this cut file for you as well prancer patisserie that is not one I would hand cut um so if you don't have a machine I would actually just draw or write it right on and that little item comes also from the mixed bag of accessories from this line find it so, it's, just this little piece right here so already done for you, all you have to do is either place on the letters or the words that you like and there's so many extra pieces in here that we could have used to decorate that are really, really beautiful, like it could have been really fun to kind of add a snowflake from one of the chimneys. Um, from the medallions would be really great the flags, so there's a lot of really fun pieces in this accessories kit, we call it a mixed bag for adding details. So what I've done on this is I've actually used the same pattern paper as you can see in the chapel, and they've just cut a strip of it, and they want to go ahead and do that. We will pull out pattern paper right here, and this is probably about two inch his wide and because I didn't cut out those top windows, it just felt really, really heavy on the top, just a big, giant blank space. So that's, why we made such a large sign for it because it really just had empty space, sort of begging for something to be there, ah, that is making me laugh because my husband came in the room while I was making these and he's like why are you adding more stuff too that I said cause the house wants it and he was like all right, you're taking this a little too far um so I just sort of like houses were talking tio do a little ribbon point like you would a nice little curve to the center and then I use it just as I would a ribbon so I just sort of start pleading it into the shape I want and I definitely measure a measured um both this item because I knew it was going to go in the center and then the house itself and I wanted it to come a little bit off the edge I sort of love the the quality of that the overlap so it's just creating that s shaped sort of like in the pleats we've already done and then we just attached it right on like that so just hot glue little beads here and here here and here and I also added in just for some extra texture a piece of this netting which is just ribbon wired ribbon from the craft store so layered that in between as well just to give it a little bit of added extra texture and you can see it just gives it the sparkle in the nice look that you would want and on top of that we've added the letters or again you could hand write them if you would like the last thing I wanted to show you is how we've created this little sign, so we used a barbecue skewer again, just like I would for cake topper we've cut it into two tiny pieces and wired those together, and we used an item from our chip board that comes with the my story line you don't have a piece out here and that's okay um but you can see it's that heavy sticker shipboard I left the sticker back on again I just punched a hole using the crocodile that big, thick hole punch and ran wire through it and then I painted it all so you can't tell it spark use your hopefully an additive in a poxy dot right on top to attach it I actually punched a hole in the base and what's really cool about this is how strong it is so it will go right through the paper machine and I wanted it right on the corner so you just punched that hole right through and then stick the score right and and it keeps it secure. I hot glued a as well, but having that little extra dough depth for it to sit in will keep it from getting knocked off. This got mailed here from texas to san francisco and it made it so that was exciting, but that's a really low little simple, easy thing, and the other things I've added are the actual dear, you've gotta have prancer, and that came from bake it pretty, which is actually a cupcake like baking website, but it's a cake topper on dh, the tiny candy canes as well. So it's really fun to kind of, like, shop in your local craft store again in the doll section and find just tiny little elements that would make sense scale wise on the village to create a really beautiful set. And I think it be really cool to kind of do one maybe that matches your own house or your own work location, um, but kind of create your own many ideal village, and that is our christmas village on market street. Do you have any question? Yeah, group, would you work with if you were working with kids on this project and how much of it would you do in advance for it? And, um, well, it depends on how perfect you want if you don't mind it like being a little messy and having, you know, a really a random village collection in your house, which I actually wouldn't I think it'd be really fun, and they I believe in crafting with kids of any age and I actually honestly believe except for maybe the exacto knife work that there really isn't a lot that they can't handle even at a young age mainly because when I'm creating with my kids I want them to be encouraged and I want them tio feel completely at ease with whatever they've created and that there's no no wrong answer so if I wanted a perfect village like this I'd probably do it myself at night if I wanted it to be more fun and representative of us I would let them make it but I wouldn't correct them at any point I would let them do what they want to d'oh it's really important to me that they don't lose that sense of creative power and it could be really hard for me as like after to be like you know and I might add the beginning be like here's how I would do that and if they choose not to do it that way then that's ok like that's their choice so if I did have them make a village I would make sure actually to really proudly display that somewhere important so that they knew that I thought that it was amazing that they did it so I actually I have a four year old I have a fifteen year old and in between and I would let them all do it but I would probably if we were what the youngest? I would probably just have them paint one, not add on pattern paper, or I would at least have it pre cut, like we had here, and then just let them glue it on for the older one. I think he would actually think, well, he wouldn't think it's cool at all, he's fifteen right now, so nothing school at all, but if if I was going to be doing it with him, I would actually just like, let him maybe he's going to make, like, a star wars spaceship, I don't know, like in his village, but that would be ok. So put that into that question on that. I mean, again, all if you have everything out that coordinates, they can't really create anything that doesn't, at least in some way go together, right? So if I had several of the items from our christmas on market street or I chose several of the items from cozy christmas, those we'll all go together no matter what they select out of the options letter there, so that is a way to sort of control a little bit of the creative aspect is what you've offered them as a choice.