Last night I made three little houses of parchment. That's even more fun, because the doors, facings, shutters and other decorations can be embossed while the little house is still flat. I figured that out when I made one of chipboard, and then later was gluing on doors and shutters... it takes a pair of tweezers and steady hands. So the next ones get all that before the folding and the gluing! (Sometimes I'm slow at figuring out things.)
I have lots of templates for little houses, but I found one on Pinterest that I really, really like. I have cut several from cardstock and chipboard on my Pazzles, and embossed by hand three of them last night from parchment. As I work, I think of new things to add to each. The paper houses are difficult to keep "square" so I do that with another piece of paper sized to the floor, glued from the top before the roof is added. Before I cut more, I am going to add the floor to the original piece.
The cardstock houses have Duralar clear plastic windows, and I designed the shutters and rooftop with Corel Draw. Obviously the chipboard houses are the most sturdy, and then I paint them and add glitter (or not). One has snow (white embossing powder) and one has "grass" (Flower Soft.) It would be easy to add a battery-powered tea light inside. I am thinking of spray painting one with the mirror spray paint I bought for no reason.
I got a catalog from Nasco and among all the pages of paper products, I saw patterns that include roofing, bricks, etc. The only problem is the patterns are on glossy paper. Glossy isn't my thing.
Then I remembered I can do the same thing in CorelDraw, and design what I want for the house as I go. I'm not doing this in mass quantity! But Nasco is a great place to get nearly everything for crafting, and they sell in quantity for classrooms.
I saw some things in that catalog that I nearly ordered -- but I stopped myself! First, I need to finish finding proper places for the thousands of dollars of "stuff" I have already!
