A Felt Gingerbread House

Ta-da! Welcome to my slightly over the top, kitsch, bordering-on-tasteless felt gingerbread house.

I'm not even going to pretend I made this for, or with, the children. It was all for me. Greedy crafting. I made it over Saturday and Sunday evenings when they were tucked up in bed. I couldn't let them near the glue gun, you see. Too dangerous. Also, they might mess up my bobble trim and button arrangement. 

I'm sorry, but I love it. I really do. It makes me happy just to look at it. I don't have a very good track record with proper, edible gingerbread houses so this was much more satisfying to make. And I can get it out year after year.

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I have put together a tutorial below should you fancy making your own. It's the best sort of crafting - minimum effort for maximum effect.

You will need:

• One cardboard box plus some extra cardboard. The sort of box that deliveries come in works best, rather than trying to make a template. Mine measured 17 x 18 x 25 cm. You need really thick, sturdy cardboard to take the weight of the glue and fabric.
• 6 sheets of brown crafting felt.
• Felt scraps in other colours for the doors and windows.
• 1 metre of bobble trim.
• 2 metres of lace trim.
• About 12 drinking straws or pipecleaners.
• Buttons in as many colours as you like. I used 54 on each side so 108 in total.
• PVA glue. I also used a glue gun to fix the bobble trim and buttons. You could probably do this with PVA, if you're very patient, but the glue gun did make it a whole lot easier.
• Scissors.

To make:

• Start by looking at your box and deciding how best to attack it with the scissors. 
• I cut off the two longer top flaps and cut into the two shorter ones to make the pointy sides. 
• There was not enough cardboard left from my first box to make the two roof pieces so I went in search of more. I am the sort of person who hoards boxes and bubblewrap and all manner or rubbish in the garage for just this sort of thing. I cut two pieces of cardboard for the roof, making them slightly bigger than the roof hole so that I would have a chalet style over-hanging roof.

•  Cover the box with felt one side at a time. I roughly measured each piece, cut it and  then used an old child's paintbrush to cover it with PVA glue, then attached it. You can trim the messy edges later.
• Cover your two roof pieces with felt.

• Using your glue gun, attach the two roof pieces to the base of the house.
• Add lace trim around the house wherever you like - I put mine along the roof top, eaves and base of the house.
• A couple of paper drinking straws hide any untidy joins along the peak of the roof and on each corner.
• Attach the bobble trim at the base of the roof so that is looks suitably "snowy".

Now, a person with more taste and restraint than me would have stopped here. The contrast of the white lace against the dark brown felt is gorgeous.

But no.

I added felt windows edged with more drinking straws, a front door, a little dog and kennel at the back and many, many buttons on the roof.

Fun was had styling it in a suitably Christmassy fashion. I found this paper tree in the Christmas decorations box in the loft. I searched Angus's box of toy animals for a cute little deer; I had no luck but did come up with this white rabbit. It was that or a polar bear.