Guest Designer Cheryl Sablotny: Add An Attached Greenhouse

I hope that you are as excited as I am to have Cheryl back as a guest designer! I was afraid I had exhausted her after her design of Moss Lodge, but she has actually been designing additional patterns faster than I can keep pace. I need to find her a class on learning Inkscape.

This is the first of two greenhouses that Cheryl has designed. The second one will be for a freestanding greenhouse. Since I had greenhouses on my list of future items to design, I was very happy when she decided to make them. I am wondering how much more of my list I can casually suggest to her. Ahem… church…schoolhouse…bait shop on wharf…

We are also working on an accessories blog post to complement the greenhouses. I’ve already designed a wheelbarrow, and we are working on benches to hold the plants. If anyone has other suggestions, please send me an email.

I asked Cheryl to write a little something about her pattern:

Cheryl’s Place is very similar to the house I grew up in. While I was building it I remembered that my mother always wanted a greenhouse but never had the chance to own one. I came up with this design which is similar to a greenhouse my mom had picked out. She passed away when she was only 45 years young so Mom, it may be a little smaller than you wanted but here’s your greenhouse! I hope everyone enjoys it as much as my mom would have.

Cheryl

This Is How You Make The Attached Greenhouse

LIKE THIS DESIGN? PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A TIP TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT.

This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy.

Attached Greenhouse Pattern Specific Materials

• The free pattern for the Attached Greenhouse from the A Cottage in the Forest Library. Design #59. Get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page
• Cricut Acetate, or clear report covers from Office Depot or The Dollar Store. The Cricut Acetate is designed to be cut by your machine, and has a film on both sides that you remove after cutting the shapes. Since the report covers do not have a film protecting them, I would suggest you cut those by hand.

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.

Steps to Make the Attached Greenhouse

• Download the Attached Greenhouse pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library.
• Import the Attached Greenhouse pattern into your design software.
• Resize the pattern as desired and out the pattern – I use my Cricut Maker. Texture if desired.
• Contour one side of your building to accommodate the Attached Greenhouse
• Fold the body of the greenhouse. Glue on the trim as desired.
• Glue on acetate windows. Attach the greenhouse to your building.
• Make base and decorate as desired.

How To Make the Attached Greenhouse

Download the Attached Greenhouse Pattern

Download the Attached Greenhouse pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is design #59. 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 Attached Greenhouse Pattern Into Design Software

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.

You may want to cut out a draft of the Attached Greenhouse and place it next to the building that you want to attach it to. In my case I decided to shrink the pattern slightly as I wanted a smaller greenhouse. I reduced the pattern to 95% of full size, so that the body was 5.435″ wide and 2.241″ tall, and the roof was 2.552″ wide and 2.056″ tall.

Cut out all of your cardstock, Kraft Board or aluminum can pieces using the pattern. If you are using cardboard and don’t intend to glue glitter or decorative papers onto your greenhouse, I suggest visiting Lucy Foxworth’s blog at Paper Glitter Glue where Lucy explores multiple ways to paint and texture your cardboard building.

Refer to the PDF I included with the svg pattern for the name of each of the pieces you need to cut out. Texture your pieces using your embossing machine and texture folders if desired.

Contour One Side of Your Building to Accommodate the Attached Greenhouse

Knowing that each person might want to attach their greenhouse to a different building, I decided a lesson on using the Contour button in Design Space would be more valuable than an altered pattern for just Holly Manor.

Determine the side to which you wish to attach the greenhouse. Decide whether you need to just remove windows, or want to add or move a door. in this case I decided that I wanted to delete the two lower windows and add a door into the attached greenhouse from the house.

Highlight your building piece, then click on the detach button on the lower right to detach the building from its score lines. You may need to ungroup the pieces too. Now with the building piece still highlighted, click the “Contour” button on the lower right.

The Contour screen opens. I selected the two longer rectangles as I wanted to delete the two lower windows.

Once I close the Contour screen, the two lower windows are gone!

Now I want to add a hole for a door. I decided that I would use the door frame from the front door, but I would manually cut out the middle panes. So I just need a hole in the building the size of the interior of the door. I open up shapes and select the square. All versions of Design Space, paid and free, have the square shape. I also unlock the scale lock under the size of the rectangle at the top of the page. Lastly, I align the door frame to the bottom of the building, and then size the added square into a rectangle so that it is the same size as the interior of the door frame.

Move the door frame to the side. Highlight the building side and the rectangle, and click on slice on menu on the bottom right.

Delete the rectangle and all other sliced pieces except the building shape. Re-attach the score lines to the building. You are ready to cut.

Fold the Body of the Greenhouse. Glue on the Trim As Desired

Fold each of the pieces on the score lines. I cut out the trim from brick PDF paper that I printed on my own printer. The brick PDF file can be found here. You could also add bricks or stonework using a stencil and grit paste. Fold the crease on the roof very well.

Place your pieces against the building to determine where you want to attach them. Remember that the roof is wider than the greenhouse. I made pencil marks where I wanted to attach the greenhouse

Glue on Acetate Windows. Attach the Greenhouse to Your Building.

If you are using the Cricut Acetate, remove one side of the attached film before gluing each piece onto the building. Once the glue is dry, remove the film from the other side. The pattern pieces for the acetate are larger than just the window area. This allow the acetate to help stiffen the sides of your building.

Glue the body of the greenhouse to the building first, then the roof. The roof is designed so that it can be lifted if you want to add more items to your greenhouse. I found with repeated lifting the roof would no longer lie flat on top of the greenhouse. I used a tiny piece of double-sided scotch tape to hold it in place. The tape is easily replaced if you wear out its stickiness.

Make Base and Decorate As Desired

Stone or brickwork would look very nice as the floor of the greenhouse, or you could leave it as dirt with a path or stepping stones. Cheryl and I are working on other accessories for your greenhouse, as well as Cheryl is designing a Freestanding Greenhouse. Look for future posts!

Enjoy making the Attached Greenhouse! I would love to see your finished design. Please share a photo of it with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com.

FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR THE ATTACHED GREENHOUSE

Download the Attached Greenhouse Pattern

LIKE THIS DESIGN? PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A TIP TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT.

Get the password for the library with the free Attached Greenhouse pattern and SVG/DXF/PDF/Studio3 files here by filling out this form:

If you have any trouble subscribing please contact me at jackie@acottageintheforest.com

Save the Attached Greenhouse to Your Favorite Pinterest Board!