Houses

When I started this house I thought to use two of the Tim Holtz village dies I had bought but almost never used – the bay windows of the Village Fixer Upper, and the side addition of the Village Addition. I didn’t get very far before I decided that I wanted taller walls and front stairs, which made the side additions too short, so they had to be replaced. And then I wanted a different window frame style, so decided to replace the bay windows too. Best laid plans and all that. Some day I will use those dies. If you own the Village Fixer Upper and want to use the die, I left the window cutout the size to fit the die, though then the window frames will not match the rest of the house. You could cut off the crossbars of my windows and use the original Tim Holtz window frames if you would prefer. My door, however, I believe is bigger than the one on the Tim Holtz die.

So my simple house became more complex, which is one of the problems I have found with my creations now that I have learned how to design. I may need someone to tap me on the shoulder now and then and rein me back in.

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A couple of weeks ago I promised to remake the Halloween farmhouse as a Winter Holiday Farmhouse. Everything always seems to take me longer than expected, but hopefully you will like one of the reasons why: I have learned how to make SVG patterns that import into Cricut Design Space with the score lines as score lines instead of cut lines, and with those score lines already attached to their shapes! This not only makes patterns so much easier for you to make, but also for me to design as I no longer have to make separate files with solid and dashed lines. It was a bit of a learning process, with a fair amount of trial and error since I didn’t have anyone who would teach me this new design technique, but I did have a file with the new technique and reverse engineered it.

I will now go back to my previous projects and redesign them using the new technique. Look for version 2.0 for each of the October 2020 or earlier files in the next couple of weeks.

For the Jolly Farmhouse I took the basic shape of my Halloween Janky Farmhouse, changed the style of the popouts, the doors and window frames, and added a porch with steps to the front door. I also included a file for the “snow” in case you want to to use glitter cardstock to add it as an accent. I use HTV (iron on glitter vinyl) that I iron onto aluminum for mine. Lastly, I included a file for a farm fence.

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