Since you're well aware that I like buying pictures of houses and creating houses you shouldn't be surprised that I would venture into creating miniature 3d house models.
So, what do I mean by that? Well, if you've been a crafter for awhile and have ventured into any craft store before the holidays you must have seen displays for everything you might need to create a miniature Christmas house village.
Some of the house supplies were created out of paper, some cardboard, some chipboard, some plastic, some wood and some ceramic. You could create the houses using a kit or buy them already finished and add other decorations like trees, figurines, miniature Christmas decorations, etc. The end result for all of this was creating a pretty little village scene to be displayed at the Christmas holiday season.
Several years ago I decided to make some chipboard gingerbread houses of my own for table decorations and wrote about them in a Linda's Blog post entitled: New Mixed Media Christmas Decorations - Adorable Gingerbread Houses.
I also make some gingerbread ornaments that I could hang on my skinny Christmas tree and wrote about them in a Linda's Blog post entitled: My New Miniature Mixed Media Gingerbread House Christmas Ornaments.
I loved making them and after doing so I decided to see if there were other chipboard house kits I could buy not just for the holiday season but for all year. So, I went searching online and found a lot of information on house villages.
It seems that house villages have been around since the late Victorian era, which certainly piqued my interest, and were very popular from the 1920's through the 1950's or so.
I found out that they were called "putz" houses and they had originated from the German word "putzen" which means to clean or polish.
According to Wikipedia - Christmas Villages
A Christmas village (or putz) is a decorative, miniature-scale village often set up during the Christmas season. These villages are rooted in the elaborate Christmas traditions of the Moravian church, a Protestant denomination. Mass-produced cardboard Christmas villages became popular in the United States during the early and mid-20th century, while porcelain versions became popular in the later part of the century.
The tradition of decorative Christmas villages built around the Christmas tree is rooted in the late 18th century holiday traditions of the Moravian church, a Protestant denomination with early settlements in Salem, North Carolina and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Karal Ann Marling writes that "This usually took the form of an elaborate landscape with animals, which may or may not have alluded to the creatures in the stable at Bethlehem or the passengers on Noah’s Ark...the typical putz went beyond the limits of any biblical scene into pure, exuberant genre." These grew to encompass much more than a nativity scene, with animations such as working flour mills, jumping dogs, running water with waterfalls and electric trains, and could fill an entire room. Families would organize "putz parties" and compete for the best show.
After World War II, several Japanese companies started mass-producing cardboard or paper houses, churches, and other buildings. These small buildings usually had holes in the back or the bottom through which Christmas lights were placed to provide illumination. The buildings had tiny colored cellophane windows and were decorated with mica-dusted roofs to give the appearance of snow. Since these buildings were made of inexpensive material and were widely available throughout the United States, they became a very popular Christmas decoration.
In the 1970s, ceramic or porcelain Christmas villages were introduced and started to gain popularity. Department 56 was one of the first companies to make these buildings and remains amongst the most well-known. Other companies, such as Lemax, have also produced similar villages, and there are numerous other brands sold. In Europe, Luville and Dickensville are established brands.
Christmas village buildings are not usually made to consistent relative scale. A church building might well be ten times the height of an ordinary house in reality but this would make very cumbersome models and look odd within a Christmas village display. It is only necessary for the church building to be noticeably taller than the house, to give it an imposing stature.
Like many other Christmas traditions, the notion of a village to celebrate a holiday has spread to other holidays, with a few companies making Halloween and Easter villages.
It's no surprise that something that was originally started for religious purposes in the late 19th century would gain popularity and, therefore, start to be mass produced for commercial purposes by companies several years or decades later.
As you're well aware I love history so reading all about these little houses was very interesting to me.
However, I've side tracked a little, as I always do....lol
After making my gingerbread houses I set out to see if there were any other cardboard or chipboard kits that were available for making other miniature houses for the various seasons or holidays. Well, to my delight, it seems there were.
I found a wonderful shop on Etsy called AgedWithThyme that sold chipboard sets for several different styles of "putz" houses, like the one pictured above. I was delighted.
So, I bought three chipboard house kits. One kit was for making six houses including a church. One kit was for making 3 beach houses which I was intrigued by as I didn't have a lot of summer decorations and one kit was for making 4 houses including a saltbox colonial like the house I live in. I was thrilled.
That was back in 2018 and, as usual, I didn't get around to making any of these until this past summer.
In looking at the three kits this summer I decided to start with the three beach houses as I had just finished making some mixed media house pictures for the spring and summer and was still in a summer mode.
I wasn't sure how long my summer mode would last as September was upon us and you know how much I love the Fall and Christmas holiday decorating season.
The beach house kit, shown in the picture above, contained the picture, instructions, and the chipboard pieces for the houses and beach chairs. Each of the three houses had a picture of the individual house pieces included in the kit and one page of very simple instructions for putting each of the beach houses together. The kit also included one page of the designers tips for making the "putz" houses.
The instructions for each of the houses called for putting the houses together first and then painting them. As, I had decided ahead of time that I wanted to make mixed media 3d beach houses that wasn't going to work for me as some of the pieces were going to be embellished versus painted. I would need to decide ahead of time what embellishments I wanted to use so I could plan the sequence I would need for putting everything together.
I did notice that this particular chipboard kit did not have tabs for helping to align the corners when gluing the houses together so I knew ahead of time this could be a problem - and it was. The houses in the other two chipboard kits I bought did have tabs. For some reason the beach houses didn't.
Plus, the chipboard used in these kits for the houses and chipboard embellishments was much thinner than what I was used to from previous chipboard kits I had used from other sellers so I knew this could, potentially, be a problem for assembling the houses - which it definitely was when I put each of the beach houses together.
I also thought the thinness of the chipboard pieces could be a problem for the small chipboard embellishments, like door frames and window frames, that I would need to paint first and then glue.
Despite my concerns I plowed ahead and decided to start with the green beach house which I had marked as #1 in the picture above.
I decided to put each of the houses together in the same manner so the sequence outlined below applies to each house.
I wanted my beach houses to have solid foundations versus chipboard as I thought this would make my houses sturdier over time given the thinness of the chipboard. For this beach house I had decided to use a rectangular wood base made out of 1/4" pine wood.
For the gray house #3, in the picture above, I decided to use a square wood base made out of 1/4" pine wood. If you look at the picture above of the house I marked as #3 you'll notice that the house is glued to the deck which is supported above the ground with the deck railings.
Given my concerns over the thinness of the chipboard I didn't think the support from the thin railings would last over time. So, I decided to fill the area between the deck and my wood square base with multiple layers of chipboard squares.
For the small blue house #2, in the picture above, I decided to use a solid ATC (artist trading card) chipboard piece I had. It was slightly bigger than the chipboard rectangle in the kit but this was not going to be a problem for me given how I wanted to finish the house.
In making each of the houses the first thing I did was to paint the wood and chipboard bases and then glued them together.
Then before gluing the houses and peripherals like the doors, roofs, door frames and window frames together I painted the pieces I was going to paint (inside and outside) and let them dry.
I noticed when I painted some of the little peripherals that the thinness of the chipboard and size of some of the pieces when they were wet tended to warp a little. I would need to adjust for that when gluing them to the house.
On house #1 and #3, in the picture above, I was going to collage a scrapbook paper summer themed piece I wanted to add to the roofs. I didn;t need to do this for house #2 as I was going to paint it. I applied mod podge to the back of the scrapbook paper I was using for the individual roofs for house #1 and house #3 and allowed that to dry.
I had decided to glue the roofs on last to allow for more flexibility with assembling the houses so when they were dry I temporarily set the roofs aside. When I was staisfied that everything was dry I glued the house sides together and then glued the houses to their chipboard bases.
Each of the houses proved to have some sort of an issue with the thinness of the chipboard and keeping everything aligned. I had to temporarily add a small piece of tape inside some of the house corners to keep them aligned while the glue dried. Once everything was set I removed the small piece of tape on the inside of the house.
Then I cut the scrapbook paper pieces I was going to add to the unpainted chipboard embellishment pieces and applied mod podge to the backs of the pieces I was going to collage or embellish with other scrapbook paper pieces to glue them together and then glued these pieces to their respective location on the house.
After being satisfied that my houses and chipboard embellishments were set I glued the roofs to the houses.
When the houses were dry I brushed matte medium on the outside of thechipboard houses, chipboard embellishments, and scrapbook paper embellishments to set everything.
After everything was dry I colored and blended around all the edges of my scrapbook images and chipboard embellishments with stabilo pencils and tortillions.
Once the houses were set I laid out the mixed media embellishments I was going to add for each house.
My initial mixed media embellishments for the houses included painted beach themed chipboard pieces, beach themed stickers, beach themed sayings, beach themed scrapbook paper images, paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers and mixed media fibers.
Here's how beach house #1 looked when I finished it.
For this beach house I had decided to go with a blue and gray trim theme. I wanted to paint the house itself blue and paint the window trims, inside door, door trims, and porch support beams and railings gray. I painted the beach chair backs and seats gray and the chipboard sides blue.
I also wanted to embellish parts of the house and porch support beams with strips of scrapbook papers to compliment the color of the house and roof.
Plus, I had found two beach themed doors of scrapbook paper that I thought would look good on the outside of the porch entrance.
My initial mixed media embellishments for this house included painted beach themed chipboard pieces, beach themed stickers, beach themed sayings, and beach themed scrapbook paper images.
Plus I wanted to add paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers, and mixed media fibers.
So, I applied mod podge individually to the backs of each of the applicable paper pieces and then individually placed them where they were going. After everything was secure I brushed matte medium on the outside of the entire house to seal everything.
Then I used stabillo pencils to highlight around all of the paper embellishments and blended them with tortillons.
Once everything was blended the way I wanted it I added the paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers, and embellishment mixed media fibers I wanted to use with hot glue.
This is how the front of the beach house looked when finished.
This is how the left side of the beach house looked when finished.
This is how the back of the beach house looked when finished.
This is how the right side of the beach house looked when finished.
Here's how beach house #3 looked when I finished it.
For this beach house I had decided to go with a green and white trim theme. I wanted to paint the house itself green and paint the window trims, door trims, and porch support beams and railings white. I painted the beach chair backs and seats green and the chipboard sides white.
The initial plan for this house called for the house to be up held up by the skinny chipboard bottom and fencing around the deck that was included in the kit. I thought that these pieces were all too flimsy and over time would fail to hold the piece up so I opted to finish this with a square piece of 1/4" pine wood and combination multi-layered pieces of chipboard to fill in the area under the deck.
My initial mixed media embellishments for this house included painted beach themed chipboard pieces, beach themed stickers, beach themed sayings, and beach themed scrapbook paper images.
Plus I wanted to add paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers, and mixed media fibers.
So, I applied mod podge individually to the backs of each of the applicable paper pieces and then individually placed them where they were going. After everything was secure I brushed matte medium on the outside of the entire house to seal everything.
Then I uses stabillo pencils to highlight around all of the paper embellishments and blended them with tortillons.
Once everything was blended the way I wanted it I added the paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers, and embellishment mixed media fibers I wanted to use with hot glue.
This is how the left side of the beach house looked when finished.
Here's how beach house #2 looked when I finished it.
For this beach house I had decided to go with a dark purple, lilac and white trim theme. I wanted to paint the house itself dark purple and paint the window trims, door trims, roof, triangle lattice on the front and back of the house and deck lilac and paint the fence sections white. I painted the beach chair backs and seats white and the chipboard sides lilac.
As this house was the smallest of the houses gluing the corner of the house with the skinny chipboard was definitely a problem and I ended up, once again, applying a piece of tape on the inside of the house corner allowing the edge enough time to dry. This is definitely where corner tabs would have been helpful.
My initial mixed media embellishments for this house included painted beach themed chipboard pieces, beach themed stickers, beach themed sayings, and beach themed scrapbook paper images.
Plus I wanted to add paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers, and mixed media fibers.
So, I applied mod podge individually to the backs of each of the applicable paper pieces and then individually placed them where they were going. After everything was secure I brushed matte medium on the outside of the entire house to seal everything.
Then I uses stabillo pencils to highlight around all of the paper embellishments and blended them with tortillons.
Once everything was blended the way I wanted it I added the paper flowers, paper reeds, silk floral flowers, and embellishment mixed media fibers I wanted to use with hot glue.
This is how the front of the beach house looked when finished.
This is how the left side of the beach house looked when finished.
This is how the right side of the beach house looked when finished.
Here's how my three mixed media beach houses turned out.
This is how the beach houses looked vis-a-vis the kit I bought.
All in all I was very pleased with the way my mixed media beach themed houses turned out.
I do think that the thin chipboard used for all the pieces in this kit could be improved upon by thickening the chipboard a little and apply tabs to the corners of all the houses - especially the smallest house.
Other than that the kit worked well for my mixed media beach house intent.
I hope you like how they turned out.
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