Village Accessories

I finally made a few 3D beach accessories to go with the Beach House pattern I published last August. I began by thinking about what items I would take with me if I was to go hang out at the beach. A towel, sunscreen, and my phone loaded with an audiobook is probably all I would need, though I would search out a palm tree to sit under as I burn easily. The audiobook isn’t really necessary as the sound of the waves at the beach always lull me to sleep within minutes. Ack, that wasn’t enough, so I threw in a beach chair for my husband, a beach umbrella in case there weren’t any palm trees to sit under, and then a couple of surf boards just because I knew they would look good leaning against the Beach House platform, not because I have ever surfed. I am sure if I had ever tried I would have needed the life preserver.

When I published the second of Cheryl’s patterns for her two greenhouses, I promised a post with some accessories for the greenhouses.

While I have been steadily working on models and tutorials for more house designs, I also have several other models I have previously made that I need to finish landscaping. For one of them I wanted a US Mail drop box. While I thought I could cut one out by hand fairly quickly, I realized that it might be an accessory other people would want for their village, particularly if you made Teri Hanson’s Post Office that she designed for Putz House Monthly. You can’t have a Post Office without mail drop boxes out front!

Every once in a while, someone writes me with a specific request. If it is for a building , I put it on my very long list of to-dos. If it is for a village accessory, I give more thought to bumping it up the list. About three weeks ago I got a request for a 3D street lamp. My first thought was that I could make one using the slot method I have been using for the trees. I played around with a couple of designs but wasn’t too excited. There are battery operated street lamp sets made by Lemax that you can add to your holiday village. I too wanted to make street lamps that would light up.

I ruminated on it for a while, cut a whole bunch of patterns that didn’t work, and then suddenly it clicked. I made a lamp post that is hollow, so you can push fairy lights up into the lamp. Run the fairy lights under the bases, and suddenly you have a Main Street lit from one end to the other!

Trees add interest to your holiday village, and 3D trees add depth. You can glue them onto your bases, or scatter them around between your houses. Many people like to use pre-made sisal trees. While you can get them in various sizes, every tree looks the same to me. I want more variety. So I started to make 3D trees by taking 2D tree cutting dies and folding and gluing them together. This time I tried experimenting with a slot method with leafy trees, and for the most part it works well.

While I am still working on a building pattern for April, I thought I would sneak in this pattern for a little outhouse.

For Christmas each year, I make a different miniature (less than 2″ high) aluminum can building ornament for each of my nephews. This last Christmas, I had thought to make a schoolhouse for them, but my sister mentioned that her boys hadn’t actually been in school since early March – so she didn’t think it fit the circumstances. Getting in the spirit of what fit 2020 best, I made the boys little miniature outhouses. I even cut up toilet paper and made a miniature roll for each outhouse, using part of a toothpick to roll up the toilet paper. Of course, I probably should have had empty rolls in each outhouses to commemorate the great TP shortage of 2020.

Though I have been in a Victorian mood recently and hence added lots of trim to my my outhouse, the pattern works fine without the trim too.