The Christmas Farmhouse in Stone - Christmas Glitter House

A New House for Your Christmas Village - Christmas Farmhouse in Stone

Just finished the Christmas Farmhouse in Stone - a putz glitter house for Christmas. I love this little cardboard house. It's smaller than most of my other paper houses only 3 inches wide, but I think the size makes it more versatile in terms of where it can be displayed around the holidays - a perfect starter home for your Christmas Village. The little house is decorated with snow and glitter along the roof top and along the walls bordering the house as well as on the bottlebrush trees - a putz house designed for Christmas display.

The free pattern is available in the paperglitterglue resource library - Design No. 6 - now. Just sign up for the newsletter and you will get the library password and can download the pattern right away.

I'm going to introduce the little Christmas Farmhouse in this post and then give the pattern and specific instructions to make the house in the next blog post. This will keep each post an easy to read size.

First just a brief bit about the design. It is a smaller house that is quite versatile in its design possibilities. You can leave off the front foyer extension. You can even omit the front center roofline gable to make a simpler house. But probably the most significant design alteration is that you can make the front foyer extension the same height as the house for an elegant little house. This pattern also would make a wonderful little country Christmas church. There are 2 chimney variations with the pattern - a chimney that is glued along the back of the roof and one that can perch on the roofline. You can choose the one that works the best for you.

Design Inspiration

What made this design come to mind? Partly it's due to how much everyone seems to like the stone texture surface such as seen on the German Half-Timbered Christmas house and the Irish Stone Cottage. It's hard to ignore that kind of positive feedback. I also made a very similar house for Halloween last year called the Stone House with 3 Gables. You can find the Stone Texture tutorial at this link. And if you would like to download the detailed instruction for making this surface, then sign up for my free newsletter and then you have access to the paperglitterglue resource library with patterns and tutorials.

And the other inspiration is that I wanted to make another free pattern that would be relatively easy to make.

Stone Texture Stencil Surface

This is currently my favorite surface on the little paper houses. You can find the stone texture tutorial here. It shows you how to use a stone stencil to make realistic stones on your paper crafts. Here are a few steps in the process on this specific Christmas putz house.

See the paper house pattern below cut out in cardboard and stenciled with Stampers Anonymous Mini Layering Stencil #28. It's my go-to stencil for making stones on the little houses. To make the mortar between the stones light and bright for Christmas I used Antique Linen. It's the perfect color between the stenciled stones for a Christmas house. On my Halloween houses, I generally make the mortar dark because, of course, Halloween.

The other colors for Christmas Farmhouse in Stone are various shades of brown from Tim Holtz Ranger Distress paint line - Gathered Twigs, Walnut Stain and the ever popular Ground Espresso. I think I skipped Fossilized Amber because I didn't need the yellow highlights. You can see that these paints are well used.

Always apply the darker shades at first. I just skip around and try to distribute the dark colors randomly, but spread out all over the house. One nice thing about the Distress paint line is that you can layer colors nicely.

Working through the different shades of brown, you end up with realistic looking stones on your little house.

Painting the Stone Texture

I posted a photo of this house somewhere on social media and one of the comments was kind of funny to me - "so pretty and so tedious". It wasn't an insult. Making this surface could be considered tedious, but to my way of thinking, it is relaxing. Doing a creative task like this is interesting and allows me to focus - rather like meditation. I hope that anyone who chooses to decorate one of their little putz houses this way will think of it the same way.

Christmas in July Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge

The Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is "Christmas in July". How wonderful! So of course, this is my entry. It's also a blog hop and the Simon Says Stamp design team has done a masterful job with their Christmas in July projects.

Addendum: I was one of four chosen for the Simon Says Stamp Designer Spotlight for this little house!!

So that's the Christmas Farmhouse in Stone. You can find the Christmas Farmhouse pattern here in the resource library. One Halloween house is almost done with this same pattern. And then I have a funny Halloween wall hanging in the works as well. But I have a real job so it will be a few days before the next two Halloween projects will be out.

P.S. Here is a sneak peek of the Halloween house

Pin to Your Favorite Christmas Board or Putz House Pinterest Board or Crafting Board!