With the price of eggs these days, we may all need to own our own chickens! I suggested to my husband that we should buy some chicks, but he doesn’t like the thought of the work, nor having to protect them from the coyote family that lives nearby. Luckily we actually have some lovely neighbors that trade eggs for our homegrown fruit and vegetables.
While researching dimensions of chicken coops, I found they vary greatly. You may want to make your chicken coop larger or smaller.
This Is How You Make The Chicken Coop
Size of the finished chicken coop in S Scale will be approximately 1 3/4″ W x 1 3/8″ D x 1 5/8″ H.
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The Chicken Coop Specific Materials
- My free pattern for the Chicken Coop from the A Cottage in the Forest Library. Design #94. Get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
- Optional: Lawn Fawn Light Brown & Dark Brown Woodgrain Cardstock. I have used this in several of my designs, anywhere I want a wood grain. If I hadn’t bought it, I could have used Kraft colored Cardstock and a wood grain texture folder to make my own.
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.
How To Make The Chicken Coop
Download the Chicken Coop Pattern
Download the Chicken Coop pattern from A Cottage in the Forest Library. It is design #94. 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 PDF file. I now include a 1″ square in with all of my SVG files. Scale the pattern so that the square is 1″ to make the Chicken Coop in the size it was designed. Of course the wonderful thing about SVG files is that you can easily scale them to make your rose arbor whatever size you would like.
Import the Chicken Coop into Design Software and Cut
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.
Cut out all of your pieces using my pattern.
Make The Chicken Coop
Fold each of the chicken coop pieces on their score lines.
If you need to texture your pieces, do so now.
Glue on the door and window trim.
Glue the body of the chicken coop together. I fold and glue it around the base 1st, then glue together the seam in the back. Fold down and glue together the roof support.
Glue the legs onto each of the 4 corners. Glue the shingles onto the roof, and the the cross boards onto the ramp.
Glue the roof onto the top of the chicken coop.
Wrap and glue the longer trim piece around the bottom of the chicken coop. Cut off the excess. Use the 3 shorter trim pieces to add trim at the top directly under the roof. One pice for the front, one for the back, and split the 3rd between the two sides. You will need to chut each piece to fit.
Glue the ramp under the door.
That’s it! Enjoy adding the Chicken Coop to your Holiday Village! I would love to see pictures of your village using the Chicken Coop. Please share photos with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com.
MAKER’S GALLERY FOR THE CHICKEN COOP
FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR THE CHICKEN COOP
Download the Chicken Coop
LIKE THIS DESIGN? PLEASE CONSIDER LEAVING A TIP TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT.
Get the password for the library with the free Chicken Coop pattern and SVG/DXF/Studio3/PDF files here by filling out this form:
If you have any trouble subscribing please contact me at jackie@acottageintheforest.com
Save the Chicken Coop to Your Favorite Pinterest Board!
This is so cute! Thank you!
Thanks!
This is one of the cutest pieces you have added to your amazing collection of miniatures. I just love the look of the wood, the boards that are “haphazardly” put onto the door and ramp, even the crazy image of Heihei on the roof. You have done an amazing job with this piece. Thank you for sharing.
The chicken isn’t exactly Heihei but is close enough. Sorry about misnaming the image.
I got the image from Creative Fabrica and I think it was labeled something like “crazy chicken.” But you are right, it did remind me of Heihei, which is why I used it instead of a regular chicken image.
Thank you. I just love that woodgrain cardstock and find myself thinking of items/ ways to use it. This one was fun to make.