Make Your Own Marques Tower

This is the second and last of the castle patterns I am making at Lucy Foxworth’s request for her Make A Castle Challenge. I had known that I wanted to explore hexagonal and octagonal towers, and had a chance to do both when I made Hiorne Tower. Exploring making round towers was next on the list, so I looked for a castle for inspiration that had a round tower. Once I saw pictures of the Marques Tower at the Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley, France, with its round turret attached to a round tower, I knew I wanted to try to make it. This one was not easy to design, as the main roof of Marques Tower is designed to fit exactly on top of the tower without any overlap. I’ve always been good at math, but found myself particularly challenged, even with an online calculator helping me with the circumference, diameter, and arc lengths. Difficult as it was to design, however, it is easy to make.

Read More

Make Your Own Hiorne Tower

This is the first of the patterns I am making at Lucy Foxworth’s request for her Make A Castle Challenge. Time permitting, I will release three patterns: Hiorne Tower, a tower or castle with a round tower, and a fancy church. Lucy will be sharing her trick for making round towers during her video this week and I didn’t want to get ahead of her, so I decided this first pattern would have hexagonal or octagonal towers. After an internet search, I decided on both.

Read More

Make Your Own Villa Torre

I have had several requests in the last few months to update the Halloween-themed Abandoned Mansion so that it can fit into a Christmas Village. Of course I had hoped to have the pattern finished before Christmas, but alas, that was not in the cards. At first I had intended to just a simple change of the windows and doors and planned on leaving the rest of the building the same, but then Lucy Foxworth of Paper Glitter Glue told me of her Make A Castle Challenge and the next thing I knew I was making a hexagonal tower!

Read More

Make Your Own Gingerbread Tudor

For this month’s design, I set myself a challenge: I needed to make a house that was easy enough that children could build it as I am teaching another class in December. At the same time, I wanted to design a building that could look quite different depending upon how you decorated it. I also wanted a building that made me think of Christmas. When mentioning all of this to a friend, she suggested I design a classic half-timber Tudor style building.

Read More

Make Your Own Little Crooked House

It is time for a new Halloween building! I decided I wanted to make something very different than the realistic looking buildings that I have a tendency to design. I also thought about how precise you have to be in making many of these buildings and decided I wanted to make a house where wacky angles and a lack of precision were celebrated. Hence, the Little Crooked House. If you find yourself lining up the steps or the dormer windows, you are making it wrong! I would really love to see pictures of just how wacky you make your house!

Read More

Make Your Own Beach House

While it is still summer I wanted to add a summer-themed house to the collection. My Beach House is not based upon any real building, but instead a recreation of an aluminum can house I made back before I bought a Cricut Maker, roughly based on a picture of a dollhouse I found on the internet. I used the Tim Holtz Village Dwelling die to make the original building, but I had to cut the platform out by hand so I only made it once as it was a fair amount of work. For my SVG I’ve made several changes to the house to make it look less like the Village Dwelling.

Read More

Make Your Own Holly Manor With Bay Windows

Last year after my friend Hollie opened a craft boutique locally where she sells my kits on commission, she asked me to design more beginner kits for the store. Holly Manor was the first of these designs, and is very easy to make. Yet almost immediately I had people who read my blog asking for bay windows for the building – an element I consider Intermediate instead of beginner. So I decided to make two story bay windows that you can add to Holly Manor.
Even if you made Holly Manor previously you can add on the bay windows as a later addition. The only other addition I made to the house is a deeper porch with roof instead of a step to the front door.

Read More

Make Your Own Cheryl’s Place

Recently, I received a request to design a L-shaped house with a porch in the L. Since I also needed to design another beginner kit for the local shop where I sell my pre-cut kits on consignment, I decided I needed to keep it fairly simple. So no bay window, no stairs (only a step) and no multi-angled intricate roofs. Like Holly Manor, while there are multiple roofs in this design, they fit together fairly simply.

I built the white Kraft Board model for the local store first. Then, for the first time since breaking my arm, I built an aluminum can model.

Read More

Make Your Own Holly Manor

In October my friend Hollie opened a craft boutique locally where she sells my kits on commission. We quickly realized that, unlike on Etsy where my intermediate and advanced kits sell best, the people coming into the store are usually first time Putz-style house builders. Hollie has asked me to design at least two more beginner kits for the store. Holly Manor is the first of these. And yes, I did name it after her – with a twist on the spelling – since she requested the design.

Read More

Make Your Own Ivy Cottage

I have finally finished a pattern for a new house! I know you were probably expecting something Halloween-themed since it is October, and I had so many ideas before I broke my arm, but it seems sort of late for them now. I shall save them for next year. I had been working on this pattern before I broke my arm and really wanted to finish it. The front was the basis for a favorite custom house that I made last year.

Read More
Scroll to Top