After designing six Halloween houses (and accessories!) in 2 1/2 months, I needed to take a break from Halloween. I decided to design a rustic looking building that reminded me of fall, but that could easily be adapted to add to a Christmas, Halloween or Fairy Village with the right colors and accessories. I started with a picture someone had sent me, then added the exterior chimney to make the building more rustic.
I had finished designing this pattern with just a shallow front porch, and then remembered I wanted to design a building with a porch deep enough to accommodate the porch swing I designed back in July. I liked the idea of a veranda that wrapped around the side of the building and had no porch railing so I could easily add items like a skeleton or a fairy to my swing depending upon the holiday. For those of you who would prefer a wrap-around porch, I did include an extra column and railings in the pattern.
I like to make my models for the tutorials without extra ornamentation so you can see the details, but I envision this house with some sort of vine growing up the corner column and along the veranda roof.
This Is How You Make Bramble Cottage
Size of the finished building as designed will be approximately 6 3/8″ W x 2 7/8 D x 4 1/2″ H. These measurements do not include the size of the base. I consider this an easy intermediate pattern.
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The Bramble Cottage Pattern Specific Materials
- My free pattern for Bramble Cottage from the A Cottage in the Forest Library. Design #90. Get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
Favorite Materials Supply List
- Cardstock, Cardboard (Kraft Board or alternative), 30 point Chipboard, or Aluminum Can – your choice! Cricut is no longer selling Kraftboard, so I now link to the 120 lb. cover cardstock by Accent Opaque that I use.
- 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 Bramble Cottage
- Download Bramble Cottage pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library
- Import Bramble Cottage 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 roofs and dormer.
- Add the veranda
- Glue on the chimney, trim, and window box.
- Make base and decorate as desired.
How To Make Bramble Cottage
Download Bramble Cottage Pattern
Download the Bramble Cottage pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is design #90. 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 holes 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 Bramble Cottage 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. I cut the roofs, veranda, and trim out of 100 lb. cover cardstock. I cut the shingles out of 80 lb. textured cardstock. I cut the rest of the pieces out of 120 lb. cover cardstock (this is the equivalent to Kraft Board.)
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 the body pieces towards the back or inside (mountain folds), except the one fold marked in the picture below, which is a valley fold. Texture or paint your body pieces now if you are going to.
Glue on the Window Frames and Doors. Attach Vellum Windows.
Glue on the window frames and doors. First I glued a piece of vellum to the back of the door, then glued it onto the door of the building. I like making my operable doors double thick as they hold up better if kids try to open them. Only the front door is operable.
Glue the vellum in place if you are using it.
Glue Together the Body of the House
Glue the body together. First I glued them in a line, then glued the last seam together.
Glue together the roof tabs on the left side of the building. Don’t glue together the roof tabs on the right yet, as they will give you access to add the bottom insert.
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 Roofs and Dormer
Now you can glue together the roof tabs on the right.
Glue on the main roof. For a rustic look, I shingled my roofs. You can find a link to my shingle patterns here. I filmed an instructional video on how to shingle a roof that you can find at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NKcTkqT72U
Glue the end piece into the second roof.
Glue the second roof onto the right side of the building. You want the second roof to be tight against the main roof, but if the lights holes for the dormer window don’t line up exactly don’t worry about it. The thickness of your shingles will make them vary.
Glue the dormer onto the second roof. the top of the dormer should be a little below the top of the second roof so that there is room for the dormer roof.
Glue on the dormer roof.
Glue the veranda roof into the underside of the second roof.
Add the Veranda
Fold and glue together each of the tabs of the veranda top and the columns.
Glue the veranda bottom into the top. This is just designed to make the veranda stronger.
Glue the veranda onto the building. Glue the columns between the veranda and the veranda roof.
Add the Chimney, Trim, and Window Box.
Fold each of the chimney pieces. Glue together.
I added a stone look to my chimney using a stencil and grit paste. You can find a tutorial on using grit paste here. When I have seams that show like the ones when I glued the chimney together, and if I am painting my item, I fill in the seams with either texture paste or grit paste before painting them. Here, I filled in the seams with grit paste then painted the chimney.
Glue on the chimney, You may need to widen the notch in the roof. Glue on the apex trim and the window box.
Make Base and Decorate as Desired.
Enjoy making Bramble Cottage 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 BRAMBLE COTTAGE
FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR BRAMBLE COTTAGE
Download the Bramble Cottage Pattern
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Get the password for the library with the free Bramble Cottage pattern and SVG/DXF/PDF/Studio3 files here by filling out this form:
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This is so reminiscent of houses in my childhood neighborhood. The details are fabulous, and I can just picture the two sisters across the street swinging on the front porch. Thank you for sharing!
Absolutely stunning – thanks for sharing
Thank you!
This was my first house of your designs I made. It will not be my last. Its fabulous. Thank you.
I’d love to see a picture and add it to my Maker’s Gallery!
I am very excited to make houses