Make Your Own Beach House

While it is still summer I wanted to add a summer-themed house to the collection. My Beach House is not based upon any real building, but instead a recreation of an aluminum can house I made back before I bought a Cricut Maker, roughly based on a picture of a dollhouse I found on the internet. I used the Tim Holtz Village Dwelling die to make the original building, but I had to cut the platform out by hand so I only made it once as it was a fair amount of work. For my SVG I’ve made several changes to the house to make it look less like the Village Dwelling.

In addition to changing the windows and doors of the house, I also made the platform larger. I originally made all of the accessories for the aluminum can Beach House 2D, but I want to make and add several 3D accessories to this beach house. Look for those accessories in my next post.

This Is How You Make The Beach House

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The Beach House Pattern Materials

My free pattern for The Beach House 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 this blog post model, I used many colors of cardstock.
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 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.
An Embossing Machine and folders. I didn’t emboss any of my pieces for this model.
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.) I didn’t use any here, but having finally used both on a cardboard house, these work very well. 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.

Steps to Make The Beach House

Download The Beach House pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library.
Import The Beach House pattern into your design software.
Cut out the pattern – I use my Cricut Maker. Texture if desired.
Fold the body of the building.
Glue on the window frames and door. Attach vellum windows.
Glue together the body of the building.
Add the bottom insert.
Glue on the roof.
Make the platform and decorate as desired.

How To Make The Beach House

Download The Beach House Pattern

Download The Beach House 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 Beach House Pattern Into Design Software

As of this blog post, a Cricut Design Space update in 2021 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 my 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 Building

Fold each of the body pieces towards the back or inside (mountain folds.) There are horizontal score lines on the building. DO NOT fold on these lines. There are used for placement of the horizontal trim. On my model below I glued on decorative paper below the horizontal score line to make the house two-tone.

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

Glue the window frames, shutters, and the door onto the building. The shutters have horizontal score lines that I used as guides to paint on trim.

Glue the window sashes onto the inside of the building.

Glue the vellum in place if you are using it.

Glue Together the Body of the House

Glue the side walls together.

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. Also glue the horizontal trim onto the body of the building above the score line.

Glue the window shades above each of the three windows.

Make the Platform

Fold the stair frame, squaring up the frame as much as possible.

Glue each of the stairs onto the stair frame.

Determine where you want your stairs to be on your platform. This will determine where you start gluing on your railing. For my all white model I decided to center the stairs. For my color model i made them more to the right.

Glue the wider strip onto the inside of the bottom of the railing.

Place a bead of glue on top of the strip you just glued on and push the platform down onto it, wrapping the railing around the corners of the platform.

Glue together the four bottom platform sides.

Turning the platform upside down, glue the bottom platform sides to the bottom of the platform, being careful to center the bottom piece.

Glue the stairs to the platform, then attach the railing to both sides of the stair a well as to the railing.

You can leave the platform as it is, or cut out the thinner trim and add it as a handrailing, or trim at the bottom of the railing. I have done both in the picture below.

That’s it! Decorate your base any way you wish. For my picture I just used a piece of sandpaper, but I am already thinking forward to a base with a combination of sand, tufty sand grass, and a few palm trees. Look for a future post with accessories for your Beach House.