Easy DIY Gingerbread Houses

If you love using gingerbread houses for the Holiday Season but don’t like all of the mess and work each year, I’m here to help! These easy DIY Gingerbread houses are made with store bought paper mache houses and can last for many seasons!

Every Christmas Season I love seeing Gingerbread houses in decor! But honestly, each time I’ve tried to make them, it’s been such a disaster! So this year I was determined to find a solution to incorporate Gingerbread houses that I could reuse and enjoy each year!  

When looking for paper mache houses, I found these at Hobby Lobby and the DIY started coming together! The houses are in a set of three and for $14.99 for the set, I think these are a great deal! The houses are also relatively large and nest inside each other for easy storage. 

 

To give the houses a slightly darker, more cohesive look, I painted the houses in Honeycomb Folk Art Matte Acrylic Paint . 

After painting the base coat, I applied white puff paint making free-hand designs over the houses. To be quite honest, I am NOT artistic! I can’t even draw a straight line! So I used every bit of my creative skills to make squiggles, lines and dots! Ha!! I really had fun coming up with the designs and looked at lots of inspiration pictures to get ideas of some easy ways to decorate the houses. In the end, polka dots were my go to! 

In total, I used 1 bottle of acrylic paint and 1 bottle of puff paint. If you’d like to do more intricate designs or lots of snow piles, you may want to get 2.

I also decided to add some drippy snow piles to the chimneys, roof and doorstep and I love the look of the snow! Theses areas of paint were pretty thick so that extended the drying time. Overall it took about 8-12 hours for the puff paint on the houses to dry. 

 

I originally planned to use these in a tablescape (which I probably will!) but when putting my mantel together, they looked perfect there!! I can’t wait to share the full mantel reveal with you so stay tuned!

I put a quick video of the process together on Instagram that you can watch here. I’d love to see your Gingerbread houses if you try this so please tag me in your posts!!

I’m also teaming up today with some amazing bloggers who are sharing some of their favorite Christmas DIYs. Theses ladies inspire me everyday and I know they will inspire you too so please click the links below and head to their blogs to see all of their beautiful inspiration! 

Bloggers' Christmas Inspiration

Returning Grace Designs | Midwest Life & Style | Rouse in the House | Vintage & Grace Living

Live Oak Nest | Le Cultivateur | Eleanor Rose Home

 

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