Gingerbread House Tree Decorations.

Christmas stash busting ……….

OMG, these gingerbread houses seemed to take forever to put together ……

…….. they started as a very basic idea to help use up some of the wooden, fairy door embellishments I bought from Hobbycraft about two years ago ………

……… but then they seemed to take on a life of their own as I kept adding one more bit of fiddle fart after another.

I used two MDF shapes for base of the house, one was actually a dog kennel (eBay),  these I coloured with a tannish brown felt pen …….

…….. while I painted both sides of  the other  houses with a Wilko emulsion tester pot.

Then I think I did things in totally the wrong order, but hey ho. I added white Tulip Slick dimensional fabric paint to the roof and then cut a template to cover the back of the kennel houses with a suitably sized and patterned Christmas design paper.  Adding  a small bail and more Slick to the back of the roof, before adding a few faux stitches using a fine tipped felt pen along the bottom and sides when dry.

At this point I wasn’t very sure where I was going with the idea ………

I put a scrap of yellow paper behind the window of the door to give the illusion of a light being on behind it.

Then decided to add two roughly painted craft sticks glued one on top of the other along the bottom of the house to give extra dimension for sticking an MDF Christmas tree either side of the door, plus a gingerbread man to ……

  

……. but these extras all needed painting, varnishing and doodling on, as did the MDF Gingerbread men, all adding to the mounting fiddle fart …..

……. but finally it was time to put everything together.

…… with a little more doodling using a white Arisito marker pen around the doors.

There were so many tiny flat back gems, Fimo, nail art candy swirls and snowflakes and tiny holly punchies  on the table I didn’t know where to turn ………. but I got there in the end.

However, not content with just decorating the front, my attention then turned to the back of the houses, adding another gingerbread man plus Fimo candy swirls and snowflakes from eBay These bags were such good value I will definitely be ordering the snowflakes at least again, as I can see their proportions working on so many other Christmas ideas going into next year.

I love how they turned out…….

……. but they were so much work, with all the individual, plain, MDF embellishments needing to be prepared and embellished and then I always seemed to be waiting for the Slick to dry.

With all the house shapes used up, I am now thinking (in the new year), I should try the idea again but this time using the log cabin idea from last week, we shall see.

Sorry for this rambling post, I hope it makes sense!