I have discussed making fences for Putz / little glitter houses in my post “Tutorial for Making Fences for Putz Houses.” The addition of fence posts for Putz fencing adds another layer of detail.

For a fence that is made from a 1/2″ wide strip of cardboard, I make posts that are 5/8″ high and usually 1/4″ wide on each side. That can certainly be varied. I’ve made fence posts in other sizes, but for the purpose of this tutorial, they will be 1/4″ on each side.

I use cracker/cereal box cardboard for this project. It is thin enough to fold well, but thick enough to hold its shape. This piece is from a Ritz cracker box. The printed side will be folded inside the fence post, so there is no need to paint over it with a base coat. The first thing to do is trim the cardboard piece. Cut off any folds in the cardboard, making sure to keep the cut line straight and the long and short sides at a right angle.

Cut a strip of cardboard 1 and 1/8″ wide and as long as you like. The extra 1/8″ is for a tab to glue the post shut. I make posts with and without the flap. If gluing with white glue, the flap is easier for me. If using my glue gun, not having a flap is easier, as the hot glue hardens quickly.

Cut 5/8″ pieces from the cardboard strip.

Score the cardboard in 1/4″ sections, ending with a 1/8″ piece. I use the back of the X-Acto blade for scoring.

Fold along the crease lines. You should end up with this:

Add a line of white glue to the flap.

When using white glue, the post will have to be held together until dry enough to hold on its own. Doesn’t take long.

To make caps for the posts, cut a strip of cardboard just a bit bigger than the post is wide. Glue the post down.

When dry enough to stay together, cut the end of the strip off.

Give the posts a base coat of white acrylic paint. Soon you’ll have a nice stockpile for future Putz houses.

Whether to use white glue or hot glue is a personal preference. White glue gives you some wiggle room for getting everything arranged just right. Hot glue is now or never. It bonds so quickly that you may not have time to position the pieces where they should be.

If you prefer hot glue, cut the post pieces without a flap. These are 5/8″ tall and the sides will be 1/4″ wide.

Apply a line of hot glue just inside the edge of the cardboard. I use a small glue gun that produces a thin line of glue. Much easier to control than a big runny glob.

Quickly bring both sides of the post together to adhere the glue.

Prepare pieces of cardboard cut to the right size for post caps, then apply hot glue to one end of the post.

Stick the post onto the cap piece.

When bonded, cut the cap piece to fit.

White glue / hot glue…one isn’t better than the other. It’s all about which one you prefer. When making Putz houses, I prefer white glue for most applications, but do use hot glue for things that can happen quickly. Like making fence posts, gluing posts to the base, etc. I find white glue better for those things that need to be done carefully, like gluing roofs to the house.

Once again, details make the post long! I’ll close here and put up another post with helps and hints about attaching fence and fence posts to the Putz base. This is what we’re going for…

When I have the next post up, I’ll link it from here.

~~Rhonda

Vintage Putz houses, as well as modern interpretations of those houses, come in many styles and degrees of detail. Some are on bases made of a single layer of cardboard. Some are on bases built up to as much as half an inch high. Some new houses are glued on boxes that can be opened or jars are used as bases. Some will have fences (with or without posts). Some will have a plain piece of cardboard as a fence, while others have fences punched or cut with holes and designs. Some fences run just along the front of the base, while others continue along the sides or all the way around the back of the building.

When crafting your own Putz houses, you are free to do as little or as much detail and embellishment as you like. I think fencing is a beautiful detail and enjoy adding it to my creations. Here’s how I make fencing, with a few tips I’ve learned along the way.

The fence height I use most often is 1/2″, so I mark the cardboard into 1/2″ strips. I do use other sizes, depending on the size of the Putz house and the desired size of the fence. When crafting your own fencing, keep proportion (scale) in mind. Think about how big the fence should be, relative to the size of the building.

A medium weight cardboard (chipboard) is a good place to start. Cereal/cracker box weight, at least. Maybe a little heavier. But too heavy and decorative scissors or punches won’t cut through it. The cardboard I used below came out of a package of bed linens. I haven’t used corrugated cardboard for fencing. The cut edge would have to be treated in some way to fill the holes. Sounds like time-consuming trouble to me…

Decorative scissors can be used to make a fence pattern. I have a stash of these for scrapbooking and the wavy one (stamp border pattern) and the zigzag are both good candidates for fencing.

Two strips of decorative fencing can be made with one decorative cut down the middle and one straight cut to separate the fence from the rest of the cardboard piece.

Hand-held punches can also be used to make decorative fencing. These fence strips (from top to bottom) were made with a diamond-shaped hand punch, a circle punch, tear drop punch, rectangular punch, diamond-shaped punch again, and a wavy scissor.

In this example, I used a rectangular-shaped punch to construct a picket fence.

To make this fence, use a 1/2″ strip of cardboard. Mark a guide line 1/8″ from one long edge of the cardboard strip.

The spacing from the top of the fence (long side of the cardboard that is marked with the guide line) and the spacing between each hole should be as uniform as possible. Hold the punch so the bottom is toward you, allowing you to watch the position of the punch in relation to the line on the cardboard. Choose a position for the side of the punch in relation to the last punched hole and use that as a guide also, as each hole is punched. Keep the hand-held punch as vertical as possible. The first few times I used this particular punch, the finished holes had a distinct lean to the right. It may take a little practice and a little fudging to get it just right.

If you want the punched holes centered on the strip, measure the size of hole your punch makes. Calculate from that, and the width of your cardboard strip, to decide where the guideline should be placed.

When the strip is finished, give it at least a base coat of paint at this point. A toothpick is a good tool for cleaning paint out of the punched holes. Make sure all the edges get a coat of paint, but do clean out excess paint. Paint left in the punched holes makes those little holes even smaller and also blurs the sharpness of the design.

I like to paint and glitter the fencing before attaching it to the base. That’s a personal call. It may be easier for others to completely assemble and glue the fencing (and posts, if used) to the base before painting/glittering. Do what seems most comfortable to you.

If you paint the fence after it is glued to the base, the cardboard will absorb moisture from the paint, and may warp or bow. If this happens, don’t worry. Just place a few pins to hold the fence in a straight line. With the pins in place, the cardboard will dry straight and the fence will look great. If the pins have been placed into wet paint, twist them as they are removed rather than pulling them straight out. If pulled straight out, they may pull up a chunk of paint that will require a touch up.

Fencing can be glued to the base without posts. Consider where the entrance should be. This particular base was made for a church with a door set to the right side of the building, so I made the entrance in the fence to the right side of the base.

Pinning the fence helps keep it in place while the glue dries. You can use a glue gun or white glue for this step.

This fence was glued with a glue gun.

This fence was glued with white glue. I glob it on. Those piles of glue are future snow drifts!

Hot glue sets up quickly. White glue has a longer dry time, so it leaves some wiggle room for moving things around till you like it. As I said, lumps and clumps of dried glue can be disguised as drifts of snow when the fence is painted, so don’t worry about leaving lumpy glue.

This is a completed base, with fencing and posts, painted and glittered. Ready for the addition of a Putz house or church and any other embellishments you choose to use.

The fence can be made with or without posts. Here’s a fence I made using decorative scissors to cut the top and a punch to add a design. This fence is on a single layer of cardboard and has two posts at the entrance.

This is the finished house on the base shown above. I used the pattern for the Bay Window House, on the Little Glitter House web site. I modified the bay window just a bit. The web site has patterns for other houses and a lot of helpful information about the hobby of constructing little glitter houses.

I was planning to include making fence posts in this tutorial, but it’s getting too long. I’ll post about that in a few days. If you are making Putz houses, I’d love to see what you’re doing.

~~Rhonda

Here are three vintage houses that the above DDIL gave me for Christmas one year. You can see that two of them have bases that are about 1/2″ tall. The white house has a flat piece of cardboard with a very simple fence as its base.

The bases for my little glitter houses are made from thin, not corrugated, cardboard. I use poster board, cardboard from cracker/cereal boxes, cardboard sheets from packaging (like those that sometimes come in new shirts or bed linens), greeting cards, etc., to make boxes for the bases.

Before you start, decide how large your base should be. I find 4×6 to be a good size for many of the houses I make, but if a Putz house is very small or extra large, the base may need to be adjusted in size to fit. An easy way to do this is to set the building on a piece of paper, arranging the trees and embellishments you want to use. Keep in mind that you may want to put a fence around part or all of the base.

Mark the size for the finished base. Remove the building and the embellishments. Measure the size of the base. Add 1″ to the length and to the width for the 1/2″ sides of the base. On this particular base, the length measured 6 7/8″. I rounded up to 7″.

Cut two pieces of cardboard the size of the finished base, plus an additional one inch on the length and the width of each piece. Trim about 1/32 of an inch off one long side and one short side of one of the pieces. This will be the bottom of the box that will make up the base. The thicker the cardboard, the larger this sliver needs to be. Cutting the bottom of the box a bit smaller insures the top of the box will fit over the bottom.

Score a line 1/2″ from the edge of each side of both pieces of cardboard. I use the back of my X-Acto knife to do the scoring, but you can use anything you have on hand that will do the job.

When the scoring is done, cut into the cardboard pieces on the long sides, just to the other scoring line. This creates flaps for the box.

Fold along all the scoring lines. Place a little white glue on the inside of the box, where the flap will rest.

Clothespins make great clamps for holding the flaps down until the glue dries.

When the glue is dry, remove the clothespins and put the top and bottom together to make a box. They should fit snugly.

I fill the base with corrugated cardboard from shipping boxes to make it strong and to give the house more stability. Use the bottom of the box to determine the size of the cardboard fillers. Measure the cardboard just a bit smaller than the box bottom.

In this example, I cut the length all at one time, then cut the width.

After one piece of fill cardboard is cut, place it in the box to see if adjustments need to be made.

Layer fill cardboard until it comes to the top of the sides. For a box with 1/2″ sides, I find four pieces cut from a box like an amazon.com shipping box to be just the right height to fill the base. A little glue between each layer doesn’t hurt. If the cardboard is a bit short in one direction, alternate the pieces to meet one end, then the other, as they are layered.

Filled with pieces cut from corrugated cardboard, the base is strong and won’t sag under the weight of a house and embellishments.

There will be a gap between the sides of the top of the box and the bottom. Draw a line of glue in there and hold the side tight until the glue holds it without gaping.

Now it’s ready for painting and glittering. Add a fence, if you like.

To make this fence, I used a hand-held, diamond-shaped punch.

If you have some houses already made, you can try different ones until you find one that seems just right.

To make this fence with no posts, I used a hand-held, rectangular-shaped punch. I cut the cardboard 1/2″ wide, then drew a pencil line 1/8″ from the edge as a guide for placing the punch. Next time, I’m using thinner cardboard. This was hard to punch.

This is the same style fence, but with posts.

This fence was cut from thin cardboard, using a wavy patterned scissor. I cut the cardboard 1/2″ wide, then trimmed the edge. Worked great.

I have a lot of churches and houses under construction. I’ll be busy making bases for a long time!

Fencing and other details are the stuff of other posts. I’ll try to get to that soon.

If you have any questions about constructing bases for your Putz or little glitter houses, please ask. I’m happy to help if I can.

~~Rhonda

I’ve been drawing patterns for Putz houses this week. Here are the assembled houses and churches, ready for painting and glittering. Can’t wait!

This is a fairly simple church with a nice bump out on the front.

This church has a few more details than the others. It’s already on a base and has a fence. I used a hand punch to make the lattice fence.

This is a very simple vintage-style Putz.

Another simple one, with a bump out front door.

This is the church, this is the steeple.
Open the doors and see all the people!

I like the roof trim on this house. I made it with a hand punch.

Very simple two-story Putz. The little roof in front of the house will be glued over the door after painting.

I like the two chimneys on this house.

It’s a bit hard to see in this picture, but the steeple tower sits back a bit from the front of the house.

Next comes the fun of painting and glittering. I’ll be posting about that soon.

~~Rhonda

Here’s what you’ll need:

Ribbon (optional)

I use old glass ball ornaments, but you could use anything that can have paper glued to it. Craft stores have paper mache ornaments that would work. I just use what I have on hand. And old ornaments have nice toppers which give the ornament a finished look.

Because I was making ornaments with family pictures on them, I used Print Shop to compose sheets of pictures to use. Here’s one I made for ornaments made with cookie cutters. Lots of little pictures on one page.

Here’s the ornament I made from that sheet of pictures…not a decoupaged ornament, but the page I used is the same as one I would make for decoupage. Of course, you don’t have to use your own pictures. Any paper can be used, as long as it is thin enough to conform easily to the curve of the ornament. Magazine pictures, newspaper, tissue paper, napkins, printed pages from old books, etc. For inspiration, google < decoupage ornament >, click IMAGE and peruse all the possibilities.

For ornaments that require a lot of little pictures right next to one another, I start in Print Shop with a blank page, divide it into 1″ squares with guides, then import pictures. I crop the pictures to just the portion I want to use. The guides help me place the pictures right next to one another and also help me size them. I like to keep them small, not more than two inches square. Most are one inch square. Once the page is filled (pictures can be duplicated, as it won’t take an entire page to make an ornament), I print the page on regular printer paper. It’s thin enough to mold around the ornament. Heavier paper and photo paper are more difficult to shape and also leave bigger ridges under the paper when overlapped.

For an ornament that will have a large picture on it, like the ones I made of my parents’ high school pictures, I use print shop again.

I divide the blank page into two inch squares, import the pictures I want to use, crop them to circles, then put them in the two inch grid. They can be right next to one another. They will be cut on the edge, so there is no need for a margin. This way, I can get 20 picture to a page. As you can see in this sample, I duplicated photos, but each one can be different, of course, if you have that many to use.

In the same file, I have the image I used for the neutral background on the ornaments of my parents. I print a full page of it and cut it into pieces the size I need.

To begin, prepare the paper. Scissors can be used to cut the paper or the paper can be torn. For the ornaments with my parents’ pictures, I used deckle scissors to cut the paper/pictures. For this ornament, I used a decorative scallop scissor.

When the paper is cut into different sizes, snip the bits of paper all around the edge with regular scissors so they more easily form to the shape of the ornament.Here’s a picture of my Mom, snipped all the way around. When snipping pictures like this, try to cut in a way that won’t compromise the picture itself. In this instance it was pretty easy.

Sometimes the picture has parts that shouldn’t be snipped through. Try to cut so those parts are left whole. Like this example of my parents in high school. I cut between their heads and along the lines in the photo across the bottom.

Bits of clipped papers…the oval one has my parents’ names and high school graduation dates printed on the other side.

Remove the topper from the ornament and use small pieces of snipped paper to glue around the top of the ornament. Larger pieces won’t fit very well around the sharper curve of the top of the ornament.

When the topper is replaced, it will cover the top of the paper where it is pulled apart.

When gluing paper to the ornament, I first apply glue to the space to be covered, apply the paper, then glue over the top of it. I use the end of the handle of my paint brush to roll over the glued picture which helps remove air bubbles and flattens the paper. If I’m not reusing the paint brush immediately to apply more glue, I immerse it in the cup of water to keep it wet. Otherwise the glue will dry and the paint brush will be useless. Just blot the water before applying more glue to the ornament.

It’s helpful to work on more than one ornament at a time, because you can go back and forth between them, letting one dry before you continue. Some kind of holder is helpful. I use small paper cups.

When gluing down a larger piece, I apply glue from the center out, in four places, like a plus sign. Straight up and down, and across from side to side. Then I finish gluing the remaining bits down. Doing a large piece this way helps the whole piece fit more precisely.

When finished with the decoupage, I topped the ornaments with some tinsel, by hot-gluing it down around the topper. The ornaments can also be finished with ribbons.

When finished, the ornaments can be sprayed with a clear acrylic sealer to prevent tackiness.

The Graphics Fairy is an excellent source of vintage images and would be a great resource for a decoupage project.

~~Rhonda

]]> http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/13/decoupaged-ornaments-tutorial/feed/ 0 http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/12/decoupaged-ornaments/ http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/12/decoupaged-ornaments/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:21:12 +0000 ~~Rhonda http://christmasnotebook.com/?p=7773 I’ve made several different decoupaged ornaments over the past few years. I enjoy crafting them and I keep thinking of new kinds to make. Here are a few samples.

These are ornaments I made for the Christmas Notebook ornament exchange in 2006. They were decorated with pictures of our home decorated for Christmas and pictures of our family enjoying the holidays. I also used prints of vintage postcards for filler on the ornaments.

I made family ornaments for the kids in 2008. I used prints of Christmas pictures from when they were younger to cover the ornaments.

In 2008, I also made garden ornaments, using pictures of our yard and gardens.

These ornaments were made this past Christmas (2011) for a small group of women, friends of my sister, who came for an afternoon house tour. The picture was decoupaged to the back, then glitter was glued over the picture and along the edge of the ornament. You look through the ornament to see the picture.

I made ornaments for this year’s Christmas Notebook exchange using the same kind of base ornament as above. It’s a flattened glass ornament. For this one, I decoupaged on both sides of the ornament instead of just one, as above. This is the front:

And this is the back:

My side of the family has an exchange for our Christmas party, with a limit of $5. I like to make something for that, so I made two decoupaged ornaments using pictures of my parents in high school and pictures of their wedding. These went home with my youngest sister.

I’ll post directions in a day or so. ~~Rhonda

]]> http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/12/decoupaged-ornaments/feed/ 5 http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/10/house-concert-2011/ http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/10/house-concert-2011/#comments Tue, 10 Jan 2012 19:02:46 +0000 ~~Rhonda http://christmasnotebook.com/?p=7751 During December, we were delighted to host Nathan George, Ross Sermons, and Mark Stoffel for the fifth year as they presented a house concert of wonderful Christmas music.

Nathan

With 62 guests, some had to find seats on the staircase, which is actually a great vantage point.

After the concert, guests had time to speak with the musicians, buy CDs and help themselves to appetizers and beverages in the kitchen.

The menu included:

Vegetable Tray with Beau Monde Dip
Three Cheese Spread with Crackers
Cheese Tray
Antipasto Platter
Chex Mix
Spicy Meatballs with Cranberry Sauce
Red and Green Seedless Grapes
Appetizer Wreath

We served Chocolate Cream Truffles, Peanut Butter Truffles and Candy Jumble on the buffet in the dining room.

Nathan, Mark and Ross always present a wonderful (and fun!) evening of worshipful Christmas music. While we host several large gatherings at Christmas, the concert is my favorite. We’re already looking forward to next year’s concert!

~~Rhonda

]]> http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/10/house-concert-2011/feed/ 1 http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/03/small-group-tour/ http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/03/small-group-tour/#comments Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:49:51 +0000 ~~Rhonda http://christmasnotebook.com/?p=7706 Each year, we host a large number of people during the holiday season. The annual Christmas Open House is a big draw, as well as the house concert with Nathan George and friends. My family will be here next Sunday for our Christmas party. That’s another large group. We also host small groups from time to time. This year, we will host a house tour and dinner for eight which was an item in the local library’s fund raising auction. The dinner has been postponed due to my mother’s death, but we hope to have it soon.

This season, we also hosted another special group. Five women from my sister’s church drove about 3 1/2 hours for a tour and an afternoon of Christmas fun.

After a tour of the house, the trees, and the decorations, we gathered in the dining room for a Christmas craft. I taught the ladies how to make small gift boxes from Christmas cards. It’s an easy craft project and always a fun way to wrap a small present.

A few weeks prior to the party, I made a set of twelve ornaments showing pictures of our holiday decorating. Each guest chose the one she liked. The ornaments were made from flat glass ornaments, so they fit nicely into the crafted boxes.

Now that everyone had something to put into her Christmas card box, it was time for dessert.

Besides the truffles, Chex Mix and holiday punch, we served Ginger Cake Trifles.

Delicious! I made the same trifle in a bowl for our Christmas Day table. My entire family loved it. We had one left over after the party and DH and DD shared it.

Thanks, ladies, for coming all that way to visit our home. Genny and I had a great time and we hope you will come again!

~~Rhonda

]]> http://christmasnotebook.com/2012/01/03/small-group-tour/feed/ 3 http://christmasnotebook.com/2011/12/28/christmas-day/ http://christmasnotebook.com/2011/12/28/christmas-day/#comments Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:37:34 +0000 ~~Rhonda http://christmasnotebook.com/?p=7682 We had a very good Christmas Day. Our son’s family came over around 1:00, and we enjoyed watching the grands open gifts. I told DDIL that it didn’t look like so many gifts when I ordered them… :-}

As our family tradition dictates, DH opened the gathering with a reading of the account of Christ’s birth from the old pulpit Bible from the Mud Creek Presbyterian Church (established in 1838 and sited where the Old Salem Cemetery is located in Washington County, IL).

Twin2 couldn’t stand it. She wanted to open presents NOW!

Stockings are always fun. Thanks to DD#2 and DD#3 for doing my stocking shopping for me this year. And I still managed to slip a few surprises into their stockings.

During the afternoon, we skyped with DS#2 and his wife. Love technology! We watched them open our gifts to them and they were able to watch us open their gifts to us.

Twin1 loved her magic wand. She walked around saying “presto!” to everything she waved her wand at.

We stopped for a “bread break.” When it’s time to form the rolls you need to stop and do it. The twins LOVE to help Ma make rolls and buns.

The twins wrapped this package for DD#1. They couldn’t agree on paper, so they used both kinds.

New situations don’t bother Amy. She was very interested in what was going on.

Anyone else get a knitted Dalek for Christmas?

All those wonderful toys and they like bubble wrap better.

We had a nice leisurely day. I enjoyed it. The grands ended up staying overnight and we were able to enjoy their company on Monday, as well.

Most of all, we rejoice in God’s great love and provision on our behalf. Thanking Him for the birth, life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

~~Rhonda

]]> http://christmasnotebook.com/2011/12/28/christmas-day/feed/ 4 http://christmasnotebook.com/2011/12/24/one-more-sleep-till-christmas/ http://christmasnotebook.com/2011/12/24/one-more-sleep-till-christmas/#comments Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:55:34 +0000 ~~Rhonda http://christmasnotebook.com/?p=7661

May your Christmas be bright and happy. And may you always remember the reason we celebrate.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:11

~~Rhonda

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