Make Your Own Barn with Stables

I had plans for a different design this month, but my friend Lucy Foxworth emailed me while I was on vacation to ask if I would make a barn pattern for her June Challenge. Of course I didn’t realize that I would be so busy on my vacation that I wouldn’t find a minute to design, but I have been working on it since I got home. I had actually made a barn out of aluminum cans years ago before I started making SVG patterns.

Though I didn’t have a pattern for it, I had recorded enough of the dimensions that I could have made it again, but Lucy already has a couple of free barn patterns on her website. I wanted to make something that didn’t look like everyone else’s barn. Plus, I am already looking ahead to making patterns for a Christmas village. I decided on making a barn with stables for reindeer or horses. Then I needed a place to park Santa’s sleigh (or a farmer’s tractor.) I couldn’t find a picture of a building that was designed exactly the way I wanted, but used the ideas from several real barns/ stables to come up with this composite. Like with my pattern for my Detached Garage, I wanted operable barn doors.

I do already have one reindeer stables pattern on my website, designed by guest designer Steven Leeds. It is #25 in my pattern library. Below is the Reindeer Stables made by Donna Camacho, who is making a Christmas North Pole Village using a lot of Steven Leeds’ patterns. You could easily use Steven’s stables next to my own if you wanted to have stables for more reindeer.

This Is How You Make The Barn with Stables

Size of the finished building as designed will be approximately 8 1/2″ W x 4 1/4″ D x 6 3/4″ H. These measurements include the cupola and weathervane, but do not include the size of the base. I consider this an intermediate pattern.

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The Barn with Stables Pattern Specific Materials

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 Barn with Stables

• Download the Barn with Stables pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library
• Import the Barn with Stables pattern into your design software
• Decide which optional elements you want to use.
• Cut out the pattern – I use my Cricut Maker.
• Fold the body of the Barn, Glue on Window Frames and Doors.
• Make the stables
• Assemble the building
• Add the roofs
• Add the columns
• Add the cupolas
• Make base and decorate as desired

How To Make The Barn with Stables

Download the Barn with Stables Pattern

Download the Barn with Stables pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is design #74. 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.

Choose between whether you want a regular back with the light hole at the bottom of the building (this is the option I make below) or if you want to use the Putz Back, where the light hole is in the back of the building.

Import the Barn with Stables Pattern into Design Software

As of this blog post, a Cricut Design Space update in 2021 broke the attached score and draw 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 some day 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 make all of my score lines red so that you can tell that they are intended to be score lines.

Decide Which Optional Elements You Want to Use

I intentionally designed this barn with several different interchangeable or optional elements. For example, for the top window, you can use a square window frame, a X window frame, or a X window frame backed by a piece of wall board. For the middle windows you can use a sashed window, a X window frame, or a X window frame backed by a piece of wall board. For the side windows you can use 3 sashed windows, or instead glue a door over the middle window. There is an optional cupola for the top of the barn, as well as a larger one that can go on the left roof. I included four different weathervanes to choose from. You can also leave off the sleigh/ tractor parking area entirely and cut your right roof shorter. I suggest you look through the tutorial below and my various pictures to decide which elements you want to use for your barn.

Cut Out Your Pattern

Cut out all of your cardstock, Kraft Board or aluminum can pieces using my pattern. If you are using cardboard and don’t intend to paint and glitter, I suggest visiting Lucy Foxworth’s blog at Paper Glitter Glue where Lucy explores multiple other ways to decorate 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. If you are using cardstock and don’t intend to paint and glitter the building, you can texture your pieces using your embossing machine and texture folders if desired.

I cut my walls out of natural/ kraft colored Kraft Board, then used my Distress Inks and Distress Crayons to add the additional color. I made fake wood siding for my walls by scoring them with a bone folder and mini scoring board, but you can just use a ruler.

Fold each of the body pieces towards the back or inside on the score lines (mountain folds.) On the front and back pieces shown below I had forgot to score the siding on the upper walls (to the right of the top window.) I corrected that later before I glued the building together. Also, the bottom tab of the upper walls should be folded towards you (Valley fFold.)

Glue on the Window Frames and Side Door. Attach Vellum Windows

Glue on all of the window frames. I give you many different choices. For the top window, you can use a square window frame, a X window frame, or a X window frame backed by a piece of wall board. For the middle windows you can use a sashed window, a X window frame, or a X window frame backed by a piece of wall board. For the side windows you can use 3 sashed windows, or instead glue a door over the middle window. I show the different choices below.

I like a lot of light from my miniature houses, so I used sashed window frames, with just the X window frames backed by the piece of wall board for the top windows. I glued those at just the top, then when dried folded it up. I did include a door in the center of the row of windows on the side.

For the operable barn doors, glue the X Trim Piece on to each of the doors. Fold on the score line, and glue the door back on itself, attaching to the door assembly piece with the crossbar.

The assembly order for the doors is below, from left to right, with the large rectangle piece or the sign on top. I designed my sign later, so I used the large rectangle at this step. If you want to design your own sign, use this rectangle in Design Space as the background for your sign. Glue the first 3 pieces together first, then glue on the sign piece making sure that the bottom of the sign aligns with the top of the doors.

Glue the doors onto the front of the building. The bottom of the doors should align with the bottom of the building. The doors slide side to side to open.

Make the Stables

Glue the stables around the stables bottom. Set aside.

Assemble the Building

Glue the building walls together. Glue both the bottom and the top walls.

Check the fit of the bottom insert piece, adjusting any of the fold lines as necessary. You may need to trim the corners. Align the notch in the bottom insert with the doors. Glue in the bottom insert piece now as it will help to help to stiffen and square the walls of the building. Once I know the fit is right, I run the needle tip of my glue bottle between the bottom insert and the sides, making sure each side is glued securely before moving on to the next.

Glue the stables onto the side of the barn.

Add the Roofs

Glue on the top, left, and stables roofs. Once again I used my mini scoring board, but this time I scored the bottom of the roof so that the roofs have ridges instead of grooves. If you don’t want to add the open parking area on the right, you can now glue down the right roof and trim it to be the size of the left roof.

Add the Columns

Glue each of the four columns together. Glue on one of the Column Support Bars right below the shortest area of the columns. The gap between the columns is about 1 inch.

Glue on each of the slanted Column Support Side pieces. Fold inn the very top of the side pieces.

Glue the 2nd Column Support Bars between the slanted side pieces.

Glue the column support to the right side of the building at the top of the wall. I had already glued on the right roof, but this is easier if you glue on the column support before gluing on the roof. Glue on the roof now.

Flip over the building and glue the column support to the bottom of your roof. I ran my needle tip glue between each section starting with the sides and then the columns, making sure each side was straight and set before moving on to the next.

Make the Cupolas

Ultimately, I only used the cupola on the top roof, but I had seen a barn with a 2nd one on a lower roof, so included that option for you. Glue the trim onto the cupola pieces. Add velum if desired.

Glue on the cupola roofs.

Here is what the barn with stables looks like with both cupolas.

Make Base and Decorate as Desired.

I include two signs for your use, one in color designed to be a print and cut, and the other that you can use to draw with a black pen on your Cricut. You can change each of the colors of the first sign to be different color pens if you have enough colored pens. I used my extra-fine Cricut pens.

Also included are four different weathervanes. I cut three of my chosen weathervane and glued them together to make them stronger, then glued onto the cupola on top of my barn. On my finished model, the reindeer in the stables are from pattern 65622166 on Creative Fabrica, and the Santa is from Cricut Access. The sleigh came from a die cut I have had for many years.

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

MAKER’S GALLERY FOR THE BARN WITH STABLES

FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR THE BARN WITH STABLES

Download the Barn with Stables Pattern

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