Here is how you make the Two-Sided Apothecary Halloween House or really any two-sided miniature house based on the pattern in my resource library. These are the detailed instructions for making the house that I didn't include in the last post. To illustrate many of the construction details, I used the Harlequin House Used Bookstore as the model for most of these photos because I remembered to take photos during construction. This house is made exactly the same way as the Apothecary Halloween house. I'll post the miniature bookstore Halloween house right after this tutorial.
Links to Information related to this tutorial:
- Apothecary Halloween House
- Harlequin House Used Bookstore
- Stone Texture if you want to stencil stone on the surface of the house
Materials for Making the Two-Sided Apothecary House
- Cardboard works well, though you can use a heavier weight cardstock like 110# cardstock
- Aleene's Quick Dry Glue or other white PVA glue
- Gesso to prime the cardboard
- Paint colors of your choice
- Siding to decorate the house
- Decorative Halloween elements such as miniature Apothecary jars, specimen jars, miniature spell books, miniature bones and skills, tiny pumpkins, printable labels for your Apothecary potion bottles.
Steps for Making the Two-Sided Apothecary House
Briefly, these are the steps in making this cardboard house:
- Copy and cut out the pattern - Design No. 7
- Decorate the outside of the house
- Make reinforcement cardboard pieces to provide good support for the house
- Decorate the inside of the house
- Make shelves for the apothecary cabinet
- Glue the house together
- Glue the roof on and install the shelves
- Add the shingles or roofing of choice
- Make and decorate the base
In the Apothecary Halloween House post I talked about the many decorative elements for that particular house. I'll talk about the elements for the Halloween bookstore in the next post.
Overall this is a fairly easy house to build.
Download the Pattern for the Apothecary House
Download the pattern to make your Apothecary Halloween house or the Halloween bookstore from my resource library. It's Design No. 7 in the library.
You can get the password for my resource library that has the pattern for the Apothecary Halloween House and other future freebies by filling out the newsletter subscription form located below. You will also receive my newsletter week or so. I will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Detailed Instructions for Making Your Own Two-Sided Apothecary Halloween House
If you are using a cutting machine, use the SVG pattern and be sure to designate score lines and attach them to the piece they are grouped with.
The Apothecary House pattern as first uploaded to Cricut Design Space. I always draw my score lines in red to help you identify score lines, you can see them below.
But once the pattern is placed on the canvas, you can't see the score lines are drawn in red, unless you click on line and see that it is red in the color box at the top left side of the canvas.
There are score lines on the main body of the house, the roof, and on the bottom piece and the two shelves.
If cutting by hand, copy the pattern onto your cardboard, score and cut the pattern
The pattern itself is very simple – it is a basic gable house with the back open. I generally make my patterns so they fit on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and cardboard. This house is taller than usual to make room for the decorative elements in the back. You may shrink or enlarge your pattern to whatever size you want depending on your sources of paper and size of cardboard.
Once you have the pattern copied, the score along the fold lines BEFORE you cut it out. It is so much easier to score before you cut because you have a bigger area to hold on to.
Main body of the Apothecary Halloween house
Roof piece for the Apothecary Miniature House
This is the over-roof for the Apothecary Halloween House
Decorate the Outside of Your Miniature Apothecary
Here are two versions of the same pattern decorated. The first is the Apothecary Halloween House and the second is the Harlequin House Used Bookstore.
Please note it is easier to glue on windows and doors at this stage than when the house is glued together.
Optional, reinforce the sides of the house with extra cardboard
I do like to cut slightly smaller pieces to reinforce the Apothecary shop to make it more sturdy.
I know that these edges aren't really going to show, but just in case, I paint them because I don't want raw cardboard to show. As much as I love cardboard - I don't like raw, unpainted cardboard.
Make Shelves for Your Miniature Two-Sided House
The shelves are made the same way for both houses. Each shelf is a little narrower than the shelf below it. I designed them that way to allow a little more light to reach the bottom shelf. Decorate each shelf as you choose. Paint is the simplest choice. Stamping or stenciling on paper then glue to the individual shelf. If the underside is going to be seen as well, then cover it the same way. Bend the glue tabs down for the top 2 shelves. The bottom shelf glue tabs bend upward to fit within the house.
Glue the house together
Now you glue the house together. It's a bit different from previous little houses which are completely enclosed. Primarily, you glue the roof flaps down to form the structure of the house. When you install the shelves, they provide more support for the house and pull the sides together better.
Glue the roof on and install the shelves
Add the shingles or roofing of choice
I've added shingles to the SVG pattern,
For both of these houses I used offcuts from the Tim Holtz Village Rooftops dies. I cut out so many of these dies that I hate to waste the leftovers because they make pretty cool rooftop shingles as well.
After you have the house completely constructed, you get to decorate your little Halloween house which really is the fun part. I'll go over the decorations on the Harlequin House Used Bookstore in the next post.
Make and decorate the base for the house
These bases are very simple to make because you don't have to cut a hole in the bottom to install an LED light. Basically, each base consists of 4-5 layers of cardboard glued together with hot glue, covered with paper, then painted. For the Halloween Used Bookstore I stacked two bases together just because I liked how it looked.
In the next post, I'll go over more details about decorating the Harlequin House Used Bookstore.
Thank you for reading.
Lucy
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