Guest Designer Cheryl Sablotny: Make Your Own Moss Lodge

It has been almost a year (i.e. way too long!) since I last shared a pattern from a guest designer. I really enjoy working with other designers and wish that more were interested in sharing their patterns. I understand their hesitation, though. First, it is a lot of work to design a pattern to share or sell. I have made as many as 15 drafts of a building before being happy with the design. Also, when you know you are going to share a design you have to measure and be precise – you can’t just make a little change with your scissors and move on. You have to revise your pattern for every little change – sometimes over and over again! Lastly, most designers I meet that don’t have their own blog or sell their patterns are only interested in making their pattern once for their own village and then moving on to the next building. Cheryl and I have spent most of this month working on the pattern and the models for Moss Lodge. I was afraid I had exhausted her, but she is already working on her next design!

I have been in a bit of a design block for the last few months, so I was thrilled when Cheryl agreed to design a building. Looking back on the conversation, I hope I didn’t twist her arm too much! And I am so delighted with the design. Storybook cottages originated in my home state of California, and yet I had never thought of designing one. The Moss Lodge pattern is easy to make but still lends itself to so much creative design by each individual builder. To begin with, Cheryl has provided us with two different type of window frames and doors, both included in the pattern.

Cheryl made her Moss Lodge model using the pointed window frames. In this option, the rounded window frames are glued to the inside of the building, and the pointed frames on the outside. She glued actual pebbles to her walls, which ended up being so heavy she had to reinforce the walls. A moss roof and pebble chimney finish the building. Look at all of those little details, including the tiny hinges on the door!

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

I accidently came across Putz houses while searching for something totally unrelated on Pinterest. I saw this little glittered house and thought “now that’s cute” and clicked on it. It opened up a whole new world for me, one I quite happily jumped right into. Loving miniatures for 42 years and working on 1:12 scale dollhouses, this was just a natural progression for me.

I found Lucy Foxworth’s site, Paper Glitter Glue and Jackie Smith’s site A Cottage in the Forest and with their patient help I’ve learned everything I know about Putz houses and using my Cricut with SVG files.

There’s no doubt I love Putzing. I have 2 craft rooms in my house but do all my putzing in my kitchen. You can no longer see my kitchen island and the table has to be cleaned off every night for dinner. Thankfully I have a husband that doesn’t mind my “stuff!”

Designing a pattern happened rather unexpectedly. I was doodling a house with a “fairy or Gnome” feel to it and before I knew it, I had a pattern! When I shared it with Jackie, she invited me to be a guest designer on her site! To say I was thrilled would be an understatement!

I had so much fun with this pattern and I sincerely hope you enjoy Moss Lodge as much as I do.

Cheryl

For my model I started with Kraft Board and embossing folders. I embossed on the rustic boards and then used paint to emphasize them. I then added the stone detail to the base, chimney and around the door using grit paste and the chimney stone stencil I made several blog posts ago. I used the rounded window frames on the outside of the building. I then finished my lodge with a shingle roof which I also embossed to give it lots of texture. I used the roof shingle cutting dies from the New Tim Holtz Village Dies. They were the perfect size.

I also built two!! white Kraft Board models, each one using the different window and door types. I want to make an aluminum can model too, but that may have to wait for a bit.

This Is How You Make Moss Lodge

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Moss Lodge Pattern Materials

The free pattern for Moss Lodge from the A Cottage in the Forest Library – get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
Cardstock, Cardboard (Kraft Board), 30 point Chipboard, or Aluminum Can – your choice! For my blog post model, I used white Kraft Board. The models for the store were also cut from white Kraft Board.
Translucent Vellum
Glue – If using cardstock, I suggest 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.
A Cutting Machine like a Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore or, if you are going to make the pattern from the PDF, a hand-held craft blade like an X-Acto knife or Cricut TrueControl Knife. I recently bought a new type of 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.
An Embossing Machine and folders.
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.
Decorative papers (optional – for cardboard.)
Multi-surface satin finish acrylic paints or Ranger distress inks (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.
Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste (optional – for cardboard.) Having finally used both the translucent and the opaque, I really prefer the translucent texture paste as you don’t have to be as careful to paint every edge of the stones you make with the paste.

Steps to Make Moss Lodge

Download the Moss Lodge pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library.
Import the Moss Lodge pattern into your design software.
Cut out the pattern – I use my Cricut Maker. Texture if desired.
Fold the body of the house.
Glue on the window frames and doors. Attach vellum windows.
Glue together the body of the house.
Add the bottom insert.
Glue on the roof.
Add the window boxes and chimney.
Make base and decorate as desired.

How To Make Moss Lodge

Download the Moss Lodge Pattern

Download the Moss Lodge pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. Don’t forget to unzip it. The pattern is available in multiple formats – as a SVG (scalable vector graphics), DXF (drawing eXchange format) or PDF file. Currently, I do not have a Silhouette or Brother Machine to test the corresponding files. If you have problems using those files please let me know so I can troubleshoot what might be going wrong. I do now include a 1″ square in with all of my SVG 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 Moss Lodge 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. I am still designing so that if someday Design Space fixes their problem score lines and drawings import as actual score lines and drawings attached to their object, though I have pretty much lost hope of that ever happening.

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 are score lines.

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 house, I suggest visiting Lucy Foxworth’s blog at Paper Glitter Glue where Lucy explores multiple ways to paint and texture your cardboard house.

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.

Fold the Body of the House

Fold each of the body pieces towards the back or inside (mountain folds.) The roof has both mountain and valley folds.

Emboss, paint or otherwise decorate your walls. I embossed them, then painted them with FolkArt Steel Gray paint, which is my favorite color to use as grout between stones. I also wanted it as the base color for my weathered wood walls. I then used the grit paste and my stencil to add the stonework. Note the use of blue painter’s tape to get straight lines for the stonework.

Glue on the Window Frames and Doors. Attach Vellum Windows.

After the grit paste was dry I painted all of my stonework as well as the weathered walls. At this point I should have added darker paint into each of the grooves in the walls to give them more definition, but I didn’t think about it until the building was almost complete.

Glue all window frames and the doors in place. If you like the rounded window/ door option, the round window frames are glued on the outside of the building. If you like the pointed window/ door option, the rounded frames are glued on the inside, and then the pointed window frames are glued on the outside. You can also add the shutters now, or leave them off if you prefer the look of the windows without them.

Glue the vellum in place if you are using it.

Glue Together the Body of the House

Glue the body together. Glue the sides together first, then the roof flaps.

Add the Bottom Insert

Check the fit of the bottom insert piece, adjusting any of the fold lines as necessary. You may need to trim the corners. Glue in the bottom insert piece now as it will help to help to stiffen and square the walls of the building.

Glue on the Roof

Glue on the roof. Shingle if desired.

Add the Window Boxes and Chimney

Fold each of the window boxes and glue under the windows. Attach the chimney.

Here is when I finally realized I needed to emphasize each of the boards by painting darker paint into the grooves. It would have been so much easier if I had painted in the lines before adding the window trim!

Make Base and Decorate As Desired

We’ve included a fence pattern in with the SVGs.

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