How to Make the Little Putz House by the Sea

Another Little Putz House by the Sea

Here is another little Putz house by the Sea, a variation on the Sea-Worn Beach House. Since I like to name my little houses, I call this one the "She's Seen Better Days". It's kind of an autobiographical house. This little cardboard house is also old and rusted just like the two previous beach houses, but maybe not quite as much. I used a couple of different paper crafting techniques that I will go over in this tutorial.

So let's get started on making the newest seaside Putz house

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Below I've summarized the steps so you have a simplified list for making these paper projects. I hope that helps you. Because the previous post on making the Sea-Worn Beach house was so detailed, I am not going into as much detail for this little paper house.

Mostly I am going to show you the two main differences in this house and the previous one. For example, here is an easier technique for making the siding. Then I'll go into detail about making the little palm tree for the base. There's even a short video on how to make the palm trees.

1. Steps for Making the Pink Little Putz House by the Sea

• Cut out the pattern - either by hand or with an automatic cutting machine like a Cricut
• Prime the house and pieces with black gesso
• Make the embossed wood siding
• Make the rusted roof
• Glue the siding on the house
• Cut out windows and the door
• Paint the trim your desired color
• Glue trim on the house and house pieces
• Glue dormers to roof
• Make the porch
• Glue roof to the house
• Adhere the porch to the house

2. Make the Miniature Palm Trees for landscaping your little beach home

• Cut out leaves for palm trees
• Paint dowel
• Edge brown packing paper with darker brown
• Cut wire for leaves
• Glue leaves to wire
• Curve leaves to mimic curve of palm trees
• Glue palm branch leaves to dowel with packing paper
• Twist packing paper around the dowel to make tree trunk
• Fan out the leaves better to get the shape of the palm tree
• Glue to your cardboard base

3. Make the Sandy Beach Cardboard base

• Paint the base
• Color sand with alcohol inks
• Sprinkle on sand
• Make hole for Palm tree
• Glue on the palm trees, seashells, and your little beach house

Here are the Detailed Directions for Making the Pink Little Putz House by the Sea

1. First, make your Pink Paper Beach House

Cut out the pattern - either by hand or with an automatic cutting machine like a Cricut

Download the pattern from the Paper Glitter Glue library in May 2019 - Design No. 53. If you don't have the password, just subscribe to my newsletter and you will get the password immediately.

For this project, the Sea-Worn Beach House pattern is in a zip folder to make it much faster to download. When you open up the folder, there are two forms of the pattern - a printable PDF form with the pattern for the cardboard base and an SVG (scalable vector graphic) pattern which is the one you use if you have an automatic cutting machine.

Prime the house and pieces with black gesso

Now prime the pieces of this house with black gesso because it is a distressed house and we're going to add siding to the house so the space between the paper siding needs to be dark in shadow.

Make the embossed wood siding

Here's where I made the siding a little easier to apply than on the previous Putz house.

First paint a sheet of watercolor paper your desired color. I chose a great pink shade called Spun Sugar from the Tim Holtz Distress Paint line.

Next spritz it with water before using the embossing folder so it will emboss easier. And here is the really cool step. Ink the raised portion of the embossing folder with black archival ink. Use the embossing folder to make the distressed grain pattern on the pink watercolor paper.

Doesn't the wood embossed paper look cool?

Now cut into strips of paper wide - between ⅛ to ¼ inch wide.

Make the rusted roof

This photos shows the rusted porch roof made with aluminum duct tape, alcohol inks, and grit paste. I love this rusty effect for my old Putz houses.

All the steps for making the rusted roof are detailed in the previous beach house post and in this tutorial on making a rusted roof with aluminum duct tape and alcohol inks.

Glue the siding on the house

Ok, so here is another way to glue siding onto a little house. Just glue the strips on without regard to the windows or the doors. This works so much easier than trying to place little pieces of paper around the windows and doors.

Cut out windows and the door

After the siding strips are firmly adhered, cut out the window openings.

If you want to have window material on these house, glue the plastic acetate on the back of the house now.

Paint the trim your desired color

Now paint the trim piece your desired color. I chose black for contrast with the pink siding.

Glue trim on the house and house pieces

Before you glue the entire house together, glue the trim around the openings.

Put the house together by gluing along the side tab and the roof flaps.

Use your painter's tape to hold the house together while this glue dries.

Glue dormers to roof

Now glue the dormers to your roof before you glue it to the house.

Make the porch

Make the porch components and glue the pieces to the base of the porch. Next glue the columns in place. You'll add the roof to the porch and glue it to the house soon. Try to make sure the glue is still wet when you do that so you can nudge the columns so that they are straight.

Now glue main roof to the house

Glue the main roof the house. Again, use painter's tape to hold it in place while the glue dries.

Finally adhere the porch to the house

Now glue the porch and the porch roof to the house. The porch roof is a bit of a pain to glue on. Be sure to maintain the sloping angle of the roof when you glue it on.

Wait until you have glued the house to the base to add embellishments. I love the seashells on the porch and the little balsa wood step you see in the finished house photos.

2. Make the Miniature Palm Trees for the Beach Landscaping

One of my online friends suggested a palm tree for the Beach House. His variation of making palm trees is here on the Big Indoor Trains website

Here is all you need to make the little palm trees for your beach house. Well, except for the glue, of course.

First, cut out leaves for palm trees

And here's a short video to show you how to make a miniature palm tree.

Now cut out the leaves for the palm trees. You have several options here. First, you can use the pattern from the Paper Glitter Glue library which you can cut out with your Cricut. Or you could purchase some foliage from the hobby store and cut the leaves to look like palm branches. But really, all you have to do is cut out some elongated ovals - about 14 per tree - and then cut the divisions on the leaves.

Next Paint the wooden dowel

For the trunk I chose a medium brown even though it was basically going to be covered up with the brown packing paper. To match the proportions on this house, the dowel is about 4 inches long.

Edge brown packing paper with darker brown

As an additional detail, I edged the packing paper with some darker brown paint - Walnut Stain Distress Paint.

Cut wire for leaves

It doesn't matter much how long the wire is - maybe 3 inches. You want it to be long enough to go down the trunk some and enough to make a nice curve at the top of the palm tree.

Glue leaves to wire

To glue the leaves to the floral wire, I use the thick Aleene's Fast Grab glue because it holds the wire so well. Each palm branch is made from 2 leaves to cover up the wire. Also I distressed the branch edges just a bit to give them some shading.

Curve leaves to mimic curved branches of palm trees

Now curve the branches a bit to mimic the curve of a palm tree branch. You'll play around with this more after you've glued the branches to the wooden dowel so it doesn't have to be perfect.

Glue branches to dowel with using brown packing paper strips

Next glue the branches to the dowel by coating one of the paper strips with glue (I used collage medium) and wind it around the top of the wooden dowel tree trunk to hold the palm tree branches in place.

Twist packing paper around the dowel to make tree trunk

Continue adding paper strips from the top of the trunk on down. See what a nice effect the strips make on the tree trunk.

Fan out the leaves better to get the shape of the palm tree

After you have finished covering the trunk, let that dry. Then fan out the leafs and branches of the palm tree.

3. Next, make the cardboard sandy beach base

Paint the base

Really, there are only a few tiny tweaks that are different on this beach base compared to the previous one. The 2 major changes are adding the palm trees and omitting the distressed fence.

But I think I did a better job transitioning the paint colors on the sea from dark to light. For the ocean colors, I used Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers and Tumbled Glass.

Below shows Salty Ocean and Peacock Feathers Distress Paints for the water. I used Pumice Stone and Antique Linen for the sand-covered part.

And this is Salty Ocean on the bottom, Peacock Feathers transitioning into Tumbled Glass.

Color sand with alcohol inks

I only had a few colors of sand for the house and I wanted some warmer colors so I colored the sand with alcohol inks. Who knew? Fortunately, I remembered that alcohol inks are used to color nonporous materials which sand is. So I experimented with the colors. These colors are a deep brown color and a yellow called Sunshine. But the yellow is too yellow and the brown is darker than I wanted so I mixed it with the plain color sand to tone it down. That worked well.

Sprinkle on sand

First trace around where the house fits on top. Apply Mod Podge with a brush where you want the sand to go. And try not to paint a thick layer of glue. It dries as a funny looking lump if you do. In the photo below you can see what I am talking about in the middle front transition between the sand layer and the ocean. There I just got the glue too thick. But I was able to cover it up with more sand later.

Before you glue the house on make hole for Palm tree

Now just poke a hole with your craft knife and rotate it around to make a hole for the palm tree trunk. And make sure the trees fit around the house before you glue them in place. That's why I glue the house on first.

And finally glue on palm trees, seashells, and the little paper beach house

Below you can see that more sand is needed around the little house.

Now you get to glue the house to the base, add more sand around the edges of the house and add seashells. If you don't have any tiny seashells you can easily purchase them online. I used the ones my mom saved from over 50 years ago.

Now poke a hole into the cardboard base with your craft knife and rotate it around to make a hole for the tree trunk. Squirt some glue in the hole and then push the palm tree in place. Also add more sand around the base of the trees to blend them in with the sandy beach better. And I also add just a dusting of Rock Candy Glitter to the water to give it some shine.

And that is how you make the "She's Seen Better Days" Pink Putz House by the Sea.

Email me if you have any questions at [email protected].

Be sure to pin to your favorite Pinterest Board!

Little House by the Sea Paper House