Greenhouse Accessories

When I published the second of Cheryl’s patterns for her two greenhouses, I promised a post with some accessories for the greenhouses. Immediately thereafter I became sidetracked with a trip to visit family and friends, and then upon my return my own real garden needed tending. I’ve weeded, trimmed, spread mulch and coffee grounds, and tied up my berries. My husband grows an extensive vegetable garden, but the berries are mine. I have 13 blueberry plants, 3 blackberry patches, 4 raspberry patches, and more strawberries than I can count. For the first time this spring, today I harvested enough blueberries, raspberries and strawberries for my breakfast without having to supplement it with any frozen or purchased fruit.

In one place we have an arbor over a gate in our garden, and my husband thought it would be a good idea to put a planter filled with strawberries on top of it. He envisioned the strawberries hanging down over the arbor. Instead, the planter has become our cat’s favorite place to take afternoon naps. Needless to say, I won’t be harvesting any strawberries from this planter.

I now have plans to make a model at some point with a cat asleep in a planter on top of a garden arbor. I encourage you to come up with your own ideas to make your models uniquely yours.

There are many items you can make to add to your garden or greenhouse. When Cheryl made her model I quickly came up with a pattern for a 3D wheelbarrow for her to add to it. I loved her landscaping so much I asked her ideas for her soil and plants. Together, we came up with some other ideas for greenhouse accessories, but don’t be limited by our suggestions. If you think of other ideas please let me know and I can add to this post! Currently, these are the accessory patterns included:

Wheelbarrow
Shovel
Garden Fork
Planter Box
3 Different Pots
Trellis
Alternative slated shelves for Mary’s Greenhouse

In addition, I’ve included instructions below on how to make Cheryl’s soil and mulch, and ideas on how to make flowery bushes..

How You Make the Greenhouse Accessories

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The Greenhouse Accessories Pattern Specific Materials

My free pattern for the Greenhouse Accessories from the A Cottage in the Forest Library. Design #61. Get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page
Medium Weight Cardstock or aluminum cans – your choice!

Favorite Materials Supply List

Cardstock, Cardboard (Kraft Board), 30 point Chipboard, or Aluminum Can – your choice!
Translucent Vellum or pictures to go in the windows.
Glue – If using cardstock, I suggest Bearly Art Glue or Art Glitter Glue. For aluminum cans, I use Aleene’s The Ultimate Glue. For cardboard or chipboard houses, I like Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue. I put it in a bottle with a thin metal tip.
If using chipboard or kraft colored cardboard, start with a base of either Liquitex white gesso or black gesso as primer.
Decorative papers (optional – for cardboard.)
Multi-surface satin finish acrylic paints or Ranger Distress Inks or Distress Crayons (for cardboard or cardstock.) Both the FolkArt and the Craftsmart paint brands work equally well. If you use distress inks, make sure they dry thoroughly before handling the pieces or you will have stained fingers. I speak from experience.
Glitter Gel Pens. I love these for coloring in small details. The company also carries another set with metallic, neon and fluorescent gel pens.
Tim Holtz Texture Paste or Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste to make brick or stone chimneys, walls or sidewalks. I actually prefer grit paste as it makes my stonework look rougher or more craggy than texture paste.
Stencils to use with the texture or grit paste to make stone or brickwork. Be careful to buy or make stencils that fit the scale of your building. For brickwork I often use the Honey Bee Salvaged Bricks stencil or the Stretcher Bricks stencil I cut myself. For stonework I usually use either the Chimney Stone stencil I made myself, or the Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Mini Set #28 Stencils.
Bone folder (optional, but strongly suggested) A bone folder helps you make sharp folds when you are using cardstock or cardboard. I have found it even helps with aluminum cans. I now use my bone folder to deepen score lines all the time.
A Cutting Machine like a Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore
A hand-held craft blade like an X-Acto knife or Cricut TrueControl Knife. I also have a hand-held knife called the Excel Knife. It is nice in that it uses the cheaper craft blades, but the blade doesn’t work its way loose like the blade in my X-Acto knife often does. You will also need a cutting mat or a glass media mat to cut on.
Metal Edged Ruler with cork backing
An Embossing Machine and folders.

How To Make The Greenhouse Accessories

Download the Greenhouse Accessories Pattern

Download the Greenhouse Accessories pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is design #61. Don’t forget to unzip it. The pattern is available in multiple formats – as a SVG (scalable vector graphics), DXF (drawing eXchange format), as a studio3 file for Silhouette, or as PDF file. I now include a 1″ square in with all of my SVG, DXF and Studio3 files. Scale the pattern so that the square is 1″ to make the building in the size it was designed. Of course the wonderful thing about SVG files is that you can easily scale them to make your building whatever size you would like.

Import the Greenhouse Accessories into Design Software and Cut

As of this blog post, a Cricut Design Space update broke the attached score lines. You will need to go through the pattern in Design Space and change the score lines to Score and then attach them to their object.

Here is a great tutorial from Jennifer Maker’s website on attaching score lines. I have started making all of my score lines red so that you can tell that they are intended to be score lines.

Cut out all of your pieces using my pattern. Since many of the items are very small, the detail may not cut well if you use thicker cardstock. If you find this is the case, cut the item out twice using thinner cardstock and glue the pieces together.

Constructing the Wheelbarrow

Fold each of the pieces. I find that painting them all before gluing together is easiest.

Place a dab of glue on each of the seams of the wheelbarrow and press them together.

Glue the folded handle piece to one side of a wheel. Glue the second wheel on top of the first.

Glue the wheel and handle onto the bottom of the wheelbarrow.

Glue the legs onto the bottom of the wheelbarrow.

Constructing the Shovel and Garden Fork

I cut each of the items twice using 80 lb. cover cardstock and then glued the two pieces together. I often find my Cricut Maker will cut one slightly smaller than the other even though I use the same pattern. I glue the smaller one on top and then paint. This gives the item more of a 3D appearance. Use your fingernails to cup the head of the shovel.

Constructing the Trellis

I cut each of the trellis pieces twice using 80 lb. cover cardstock and then glued the two pieces together.

Constructing the Pots

Consider varying the colors or sizes to give yourself more variety. The round. square and hexagon pot are made from folding, gluing the sides together, then gluing on the bottom. I added an extra strip to the top of the round pot to make it look more like a terra cotta pot.

Constructing the Planter

Fold and glue. Fold the legs and attach on each corner. Glue on decorative strips as desired,

Make Dirt and Mulch

The dirt is made from used coffee grounds and the mulch from used tea leaves. Bake them at 250 for 25-30 minutes. You can also add some of the tea leaves to your coffee grounds to get a different looking dirt. Vary how much of the tea leaves you add to your coffee grounds depending on how leafy you want your dirt to be.

Ideas on How to Make Flowering Plants

For Cheryl’s flowering bushes planted around her greenhouse, she used Green Grass Tufts that are designed for miniature railroading. For the flowers she glued on a product called Flower Soft that you can buy in several different colors from Frantic Stamper.

Cheryl and I brainstormed other ways to make flowers. You can buy the grass tufts already colored with flowers. You can also carefully dot paint onto the ends of the grass tufts. Another thing Cheryl has tried is using the paint scrapings left after she has painted a building. If you lay waxed paper or aluminum foil under your buildings when you paint them, the excess paint scrapes off easily. Place each color in a separate zip lock bag for future use.

Ideas on Adding Grass

Amazon sells a Turf that you can use to add grass to your model. Hobby Lobby and Michaels Art & Crafts also sell several shades of blended tuft, and Michael’s additionally carries a mini green grass mat that you can cut to fit. I have also collected moss from my garden, dried it thoroughly, and chopped it fine. You can add food coloring to get the shade of green you desire. This tends to make a rougher looking grass, however. I use Modge Podge to attach my grass.

That’s it! Enjoy adding your Greenhouse Accessories to your Holiday Village! I would love to see pictures of your village using the greenhouses and accessories. Please share photos with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com.