Make Your Own Monster Mouth Manse
This kit is for personal use ONLY. Please do not copy, distribute, or sell any part of this design or the instructions without my permission. Pre-Cut & Digital Monster Mouth Manse @2025 Jacqueline Smith
Every Halloween I am envious of people who decorate their homes with monster faces. My house just does not lend itself to this kind of decoration. When I can’t have the house I want in real life, I make myself a miniature version! Cape Cod style houses make the best monster faces, so I designed a Monster Mouth Manse to add to my miniature Halloween village. You can change the look of your Monster Mouth Manse using the included alternative faces.
Decorate your own home for Halloween with this monstrously easy cardstock Halloween house. Once you have mastered the fundamentals of making miniature houses as decorations, explore this website for more Halloween house designs. You will find everything you need to make your own Halloween village.
Please read all instructions prior to beginning the project. Instructions are given for both the digital and pre-cut versions. If you are new to making houses, make sure you read and understand each step before placing your glue.
I consider this an easy intermediate pattern.
Before you start your new kit, think about how you will want to decorate it. You can paint the house, paint the house and glitter it, glitter just parts of the house like the roof, use the kit pieces as a guide to cut out decorative paper that you can glue onto the house, or just leave the building white for a modern look. If you leave any portion of the house as unpainted cardboard, I suggest spraying with a matte acrylic sealer like Krylon or Modge Podge Sealer.
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Suggested Material List . . .
- Pre-cut kit has been cut from White Kraft Board. This is equivalent to 120 lb cardstock or cardboard.
- Materials for Digital version:
- 110 lb solid core cover cardstock in a range of autumn colors, or cardboard and Multi-surface satin finish acrylic paints in your color choices.
- If you want to add shingles: 85 lb textured solid core cardstock or texture your own.
- Multi-Colored Vellum Pack for the eyes and windowpanes in your choice of colors. I used yellow and black for the eyes, and red for the rest of the windows. If all you have is Translucent Vellum, use a Sharpie pen to color the eyes.
- Red Sharpie pen
- Ranger Distress Inks or Distress Crayons to give an aged or distressed look to your building.
- Art Glitter Glue or Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue. I put the glue in a bottle with a thin tip
- Bone Folder – A bone folder helps you make sharp folds when you are using cardstock or cardboard.
- Jewelry Pliers. You can use tweezers if you don’t have pliers.
- Optional: Black Cricut Pen to draw the detail on the boards around the eyes. You can draw them in by hand if you don’t have a black pen that fits your Cricut.
- Optional: An Embossing Machine and folders
NOTES . . . (read before starting)
- Due to variations by each builder you may find a trim piece a tad longer than needed. If this happens, simply trim it down to fit.
- DO use the cutting guides in the kit/files to identify all of the pieces! It’s always a good idea to lay out all of the pieces before you start so that you have everything in the correct place.
- The color coding of shapes in the guide are only used to help you identify pieces. Digital users should change these colors inside their software to suit their own needs.
Cutting Guide …
Your kit will include either the Regular Back, Trim & Bottom Insert, OR the Putz Back & Putz Bottom Insert, and a strengthening ring for the Putz hole, depending on which option you chose when you purchased the kit.
The SVG files were created in a way that combines elements to help with possible confusion on trim pieces. If you will be using various materials to create the project and need to separate these, simply “Ungroup” the selection.
The lines grouped with the boards around the eyes need to be changed from “cut” to “draw” and attached to the boards. You can draw them in by hand if you don’t have a black pen that fits your Cricut.
If you don’t have both black and yellow vellum for the eyes, you can change the pupil from “cut” to draw” and attach. Color in the pupil with a Sharpie.
Let’s get started . . .
The following instructions are to show you how the building should be constructed. I show the order of construction without any paint or glitter. Think about how you will finish the building and if any parts will need to be painted or finished before being glued in place. I have taken many of the pictures using colored cardstock to aid in seeing each step.
Digital users should think about what colors they want to cut pieces from. Change the shape colors inside your software program to cut pieces from the colors you decide upon.
There is no wrong way to paint, glitter and glue. Personally, I like to paint the trim and walls when flat, then glue the trim onto the building, add the vellum, and then glue the building together. I then glitter the completed building. However, I know people who glitter the building while flat before gluing it together. I suggest you try different methods until you find out what works best for you. Tutorials for various ways to decorate your house can be found on the A Cottage in the Forest Website
Constructing the Building
1. Fold the body pieces towards the back or inside (mountain folds.)
2. Glue on the window frames and door.
3. Set the dormers aside. Glue the vellum in place on the inside of the front, back and sides.
4. Glue the body of the building together. Glue the roof flaps together.
5. Check the fit of the Bottom Insert, adjusting any of the fold lines as necessary. You may need to trim the corners. Glue in the Bottom Insert now as it will help to stiffen and square the walls of the building.
Though I forgot to do so for this example, now is a good time to use your distress inks around the corners of the building to age it.
6. There are many fun embossing folders you can use to texture the roof. One of my favorites for Halloween has bats, and another has spider webs. If you are going to emboss your roof, do so before you glue the two parts together.
If you would like to shingle your roof, I include a shingle pattern in the SVG. You can find more shingle patterns on my website at acottageintheforest.com/shingle-patterns/. I prefer to use 80 or 85 lb. textured cardstock for the shingles. If you don’t have textured cardstock, you can texture your own.
Glue together the two parts of the main roof, matching the curve.
7. If you are shingling your roof, start at the bottom of each edge and work towards the peak, overlapping your shingles. Try to maintain the sag of the roof. This is a Halloween house so your shingles can be a bit wonky! I bent my shingles to help it curve. If you use a heavier cardstock, you may need to snip a few notches in the top part of each shingle to help it curve.
8. Only glue down the top, solid part of the shingle. After all of my shingles are secure, I run the tip of my bone folder or a pin tool under the lower part of the shingle to help ruffle them and give them dimension.
9. When you finish shingling the main roof, turn the roof over and cut the circles out of the shingles with your craft knife. You do not have to be exact as they will be covered by the gables.
Shingle the porch roof and the dormer roofs. I cut 30 shingles to complete all the roofs.
Glue the main roof onto the body of the building.
10. Fold the porch and the columns
11. Glue the porch together and the columns together.
12. Turn over the columns and glue the porch roof to the back. Use your red Sharpie pen to color the “blood” onto the fangs. You can use paint if you don’t have a red Sharpie.
13. Glue the columns on to the front edge of the porch. Use your red Sharpie to draw on a “tongue” or use one of the alternative faces to cut out a tongue out of red cardstock.
14. Glue the porch onto the front of the house. Glue the fangs onto the front of the porch.
15. Glue together the dormer windows. Add the dormer roof so that it is flush with the back of the dormer. Glue or draw the pupil onto the eye. If you are drawing, fill in the pupil with a Sharpie pen instead of a Cricut pen, as it dries quicker on vellum.
16. Glue the eye boards that look like eyelashes onto the dormers. Glue the vellum eye into the inside of the dormer.
17. Try different placement of the dormers on the roof. On the left, the dormer is straight up, and on the right it is tilted. Decide which look you like best.
18. Glue the dormers and their roofs to the main roof. Glue the boards over the lower windows in any combination you like. I provided various boards of different sizes.
19. Add the Chimney. Use Distress Inks to Age the Building.
Make base and decorate as desired. This building can be built from a variety of materials and finished with any method you are used to. Have fun decorating yours!
Enjoy making your Monster Mouth Manse!! I would love to see your finished building. Please share a photo with me by emailing me at Jackie@acottageintheforest.com.
Examples for Inspiration
