How To Make a Putz House

More information on Putz Houses available here.

I started out with three plain cardboard ornaments from Michael's. Note the ugly jute hangers!

I painted the walls and roof with acrylic craft paints. Then the glittering started! 

I prefer Martha Stewart fine glitter. It goes a long way and covers nicely. The crystal glitter allows the colors underneath to show through.  I discovered this as a problem on the church roof, because the glitter looks less like snow than ice. Anyway, I decided that for the other ones I would add white paint before the glitter to give the snow more dimension.

 I started to run low on the crystal glitter and I went looking at Walmart for a suitable replacement. Not much luck there!  I did find some puffy fabric paint that looks white in the bottle with irridescent glitter.  I used it here to add snowdrifts next to the path, around the base of the church and icy drips to the eaves.  As it dries, it gets less white and more clear with glitter, but still holds its shape well. I was a little worried that this type of glue/paint would not work for this project.

Here you can see that the windows are now covered from the inside. I used an exacto knife and popped the bottom off of the houses to gain access to the inside. I cut scraps of patterned scrapbook paper to fit and taped them in with scotch tape.  I did not cover the church windows because I placed a Christmas tree inside and wanted it to be visible.

 After adding all the paint and snow that I wanted on the house, I used a small brush to cover the walls, roof, windows, etc. with Elmer's glue, just a thin layer. Then I covered it all in a final layer of Martha Stewart Fine Crystal glitter.  I cut off that horrible jute hanger.

 The church has a larger base than the others because I substituted the original base with a new one made of layers of cardstock.  I painted a pathway with gray paint and outlined stones for the walkway using a silver Sharpie marker.  I left plenty of room for bottlebrush trees and a figure, when I find some in the future.

These are fun to make and look so nice when they are finally done. I will be making more of these in the future!

Gale