Shops and Village Buildings

This month I decided to make SVGs in Inkscape of one of the early buildings I originally designed in Cricut Design Space. This building is based on Gus O’Connor’s Pub in Doolin, Ireland. From TheJournal.ie: “SINCE 1832, GUS O’Connor’s has been a fixture in Doolin, Co Clare. Over the years, it has garnered a reputation as one of the best regarded traditional music pubs in Ireland.”

For a while now I have been receiving requests to make more buildings that would fit in with my Mid-Century Modern House. The house tends to be one of my most popular downloads as well as a best selling DIY kit. There are other places to find free Mid-Century Modern house patterns, however. It is clear the dearth of patterns is for shops for your Retro Village. With how hot it has been outside, a Retro Ice Cream Stand seemed perfect.

I had promised Lucy Foxworth that I would make a church pattern with a tower during her Make A Castle Challenge. I know Lucy is working on a cathedral with towers, but I was more interested in making a church that would fit in with the rest of my village.

Having explored designing with hexagonal, octagonal, and round towers, I was ready for a nice simple square tower. I found several churches that I could have used for inspiration, but settled on the Waiʻoli Huiʻia Church in Hanalei, Hawaii. There are two fabulous snorkeling beaches on the north shore of Kaua’i that we really enjoy when we visit, and we drive past the Waiʻoli Huiʻia Church every time we go snorkeling at those beaches.

I thought it was time to add another store to the village. I love having the houses in my holiday village surround a downtown park lined with businesses. And once again I wanted a real building for my model, so I found a picture of a cute corner store in England that I thought could be used for any kind of shop. While I wanted to make a little bodega like the ones I see when I visit my son in NY, I believe this building could easily adapted to make a coffee shop, little liquor store, or even a restaurant.

Perhaps it was the year I spent living in England when I was a teenager, but I am extraordinarily fond of fish & chips. So when a customer reached out to me, explaining that their family owns a fish & chips shop in Dublin and that they wanted a replica to join their existing Lemax village, I was up for the challenge. This replica was demanding as it is a different scale than I usually work with and really reached the maximum size I could make with aluminum cans. I actually offered to make it from cardboard instead of cans but they liked the uniqueness of the aluminum cans (thank goodness, as I can’t paint.)

Of course I also had in the back of my mind that I could scale and simplify the pattern a bit, and offer it here when I was done. While the building itself is a fairly basic rectangle, it does give me the opportunity to introduce some new elements like exploring different ways to make shop signs, printing and drawing on vellum, and joining together two story buildings of different material or textures. And of course, the picnic tables with patio umbrellas are just the cutest embellishment.