Make Your Own Gingerbread Tudor

For this month’s design, I set myself a challenge: I needed to make a house that was easy enough that children could build it as I am teaching another class in December. At the same time, I wanted to design a building that could look quite different depending upon how you decorated it. I also wanted a building that made me think of Christmas. When mentioning all of this to a friend, she suggested I design a classic half-timber Tudor style building.

The real building that my friend suggested I use as inspiration was way too complicated for a child to build, so after putting that one aside, I started searching through Pinterest. I saved pictures of a lot of interesting, but far too complicated Tudors until I came across the picture of a Tudor style gingerbread house. That led me into a new and very interesting search. I had no idea there were so many complicated gingerbread houses out there! Knowing how long it takes me to make a cardboard or aluminum can model, I can’t even imagine how long it took to make some of these gingerbread houses. Look at this one by Eduardo A Millán (@thegingerbreadartist on Instagram):

Can you even imagine? Look at all of that stained glass! He has to make each of the panes one color at a time. And he makes the railings by piping out royal icing! While he has a lot of pictures on Instagram of him making the building, I wish there was more detail on how he made it. Not that I need any new hobbies.

Needless to say, that was not going to be the beginner house I was going to use for inspiration. Eventually I did find a picture on Pinterest of the shape of a building I felt was easy enough. I then found several houses using that shape I could use for inspiration. All were either dollhouses or gingerbread houses, so I decided I needed to make multiple models of my Tudor, and one needed to be a cardboard gingerbread house. This post will show two ways of making the Tudor house, and I will devote a separate post to making a cardboard gingerbread house. Since all will use the same pattern, I named it The Gingerbread Tudor.

This Is How You Make The Gingerbread Tudor

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The Gingerbread Tudor Pattern Materials

• My free pattern for The Gingerbread Tudor from the A Cottage in the Forest Library – get the password for free by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
• Cricut Extra Fine black pen to draw the panes on the vellum. It drives me crazy that you can’t buy the black pen by itself. If you think you will use many different colors in other projects, it may be worth buying the 30 pack of various colors.

• Cardstock, Cardboard (Kraft Board), 30 point Chipboard, or Aluminum Can – your choice!
• 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.
• 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 (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.
• 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 to of a glass media mat to cut on.
• Metal Edged Ruler with cork backing
• An Embossing Machine and folders.

Steps to Make The Gingerbread Tutor

• Download The Gingerbread Tudor pattern from A Cottage in the Forest library.
• Import The Gingerbread Tudor 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 timber frames, window frames and door. Attach vellum windows.
• Glue together the body of the building.
• Add the bottom insert.
• Glue on the roof.
• Add the steps, upper window roof, and chimney.

How To Make The Gingerbread Tudor

Download The Gingerbread Tudor Pattern

Download The Gingerbread Tudor 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 Gingerbread Tutor 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 and draw lines to Score and Draw 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 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) except for the one valley fold on each of the sides.

Next, determine if you want the timber trim to cover both the first and second story, or just the second story. If only the second story, cut the timber trim below the second story as I show on the right in my example below.

If your timber is only going to cover the second story, you may want to make the first story brick or stone. I decided to use the Honey Bee Salvaged Bricks stencil and Tim Holtz Distress Grit Paste to make the first story brick for the building on the right. For the building on the left I used Tim Holtz Texture Paste to imitate plaster infill, but I easily could have just painted the building.

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

Glue on the timber trim.

Glue on the window trim, the doors, and the crossbars onto the doors. 

Glue the vellum in place if you are using it. I colored several of the panes with glitter gel pens to give them a stained glass look.

Glue Together the Body of the House

Since the side walls fold outwards, I glue the bottom part of the sides to the front and back, wait until the glue has dried, then glue together the upper portion of the walls.

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

Fold the overhang pieces on each side of the roof.

Glue on the roof. I glued down first one side, waited for the glue to dry, then glued down the other. Glue together the peak of the overhang.

Add shingles to the roof now if you wish to. I also added a little washi tape to the front of the overhang on one of the houses as decoration.

Add the Steps, Upper Window Roof, and Chimney.

Fold the steps, the upper window roof, and the chimney. Glue together and decorate each.

Glue steps and upper window roofs to both the front and back. Attach the chimney to the roof.

That’s it! Decorate your base any way you wish.

MAKER’S GALLERY FOR THE GINGERBREAD TUDOR

FREE CUT FILES & PATTERN FOR THE GINGERBREAD TUTOR

Download the Gingerbread Tudor Pattern

Get the password for the library with the free Gingerbread Tudor pattern and SVG/DXF/PDF files here by filling out this form:

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