Saturday, January 30, 2021

Decorating My Valentine Village

 

Valentine's Day

Last night I finished my Valentine's Day village and set it up with all kinds of sweet treats!
Check it out:


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Disclosure - This post may contain affiliate links.  If a purchase is made through an affiliate link then (at no additional cost to you) I will receive a commission.  You can read more about affiliate links here.



Valentine's Day

Here are the houses ready to be decorated right after I put them together.
In case you missed my how-to putz house post, you can click  here.



Valentine's Day

The first thing that I did was to paint them using acrylic paint in shades of red, pinks and gold.



Valentine's Day

Once the paint was dry I used lightweight spackle to pipe on what looks like icing.  While it was still wet I added in sprinkles (Dollar Tree miniature foam balls) and faux cherries.  The cherry chimneys are my favorite part of these houses 😍

(You can click here to browse Dollar Tree's online selection of craft supplies)



Valentine's Day

I wanted to add some chocolate to my valentine houses, so I took  these foam hearts and painted some of them in shades of brown...



Valentine's Day

...and attached them to the fronts of my houses.



Valentine's Day

To make my house look a little more 'freshly baked' I sprayed them with an adhesive spray (Dollar Tree) and then lightly sprinkled on some cinnamon.

Not only does the cinnamon add to the baked good look, but it smells wonderful too!



Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day

Here are my houses on display with other Valentine treats
I've added links here if you want to make any of them yourself:


The cakes were made with Styrofoam covered in light weight spackle/ joint compound that was tinted with acrylic paint.
The macaroons were made with Sculpy clay (painted with acrylic) and spackle filling.


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I hope you enjoyed this Valentine's Day decor post, thanks for stopping by!


-Jennifer

© Studio 27 by Jennifer Adams 2021

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This post was added to the following link parties:

Wonderful Wednesday (Oh My Heartsie Girl)
Wonderful Wednesday (Penny's Passion)

This post was featured at:

Wonderful Wednesday (Oh My Heartsie Girl)



















Saturday, January 23, 2021

Make Your Own Putz House

 

Tiny Village

Putz houses, or tiny decorative houses, are extremely popular these days!

Just take a look at these examples:

I have always loved little villages at Christmas time and have been wanting to expand my collection to include tiny houses for other holidays as well.  I've been on the lookout for awhile, wanting to find some tiny houses that would either be ready to decorate myself or easy to redecorate. Finally I wondered how difficult would it be to make some up myself?

Well yesterday was the day that I finally took the plunge and designed a collection of my own, ready to decorate, little houses.  Read on and I'll show you how I did it:


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Disclosure - This post may contain affiliate links.  If a purchase is made through an affiliate link then (at no additional cost to you) I will receive a commission.  You can read more about affiliate links here.



Tiny Village

This first picture I'm showing you is of the three different styles of houses that I made.  The top and the bottom left are the simplest, with the bottom right being only slightly more difficult.  I'll walk you through how I did both!



Tiny Village

Let's start with the most simple of houses, this narrow building.  All you really need for this house is a series of 6 rectangles, 4 of equal size for the walls and 2 slightly larger for the roof.  You take two rectangles and trim the ends to create an angled roof, then add the details of doors and windows.  I only placed openings at the front of my houses, but you could certainly get as complex as you would like.  The rest of the rectangles, the two of similar size that will be the side walls and the two slightly larger that will be the roof, you can leave alone.

*Note - The two rectangles for the roof don't absolutely have to be slightly larger, I only did this to give a bit of overhang to the look of my roof.  If you really want to keep things simple, the roof pieces can be the exact same size as the rest.

For reference, the pieces that are pictured here are about 3" X 5", or roughly the size of an index card.

You can cut your rectangles out of many different materials; cardstock, balsa wood and cardboard being just a few.  I decided to go with foam board for mine which you can pick up at Dollar Tree for just $1 a sheet.  I was able to make all three of my houses with one sheet and still had foam left over.

So how did I cut out my pieces?  Let me tell you, I had these grand ideas of popping my foam board onto a Cricut mat and letting my cutting machine do the work for me.  In fact, I even went into Design Space (Cricut's design program) and made all my shapes there.  It wasn't until I went to cut that I realized that my foam board is too thick to fit into the machine...oops!

At that point I switched things up and changed my 'cut' files into 'draw' files (only the Cricut Maker can do this) and had the machine draw the shapes out onto paper instead.  I then used those papers as stencils and cut the foam board by hand using a craft knife instead.

So how can you cut out your shapes?

-If you have a cutting machine and are using the correctly sized material, you can have your machine cut the pieces for you.  Your pieces can be those you have designed yourself, or you can purchase SVG files to use.

-If you have a Cricut Maker and are using foam board, you can use your machine to draw your pattern onto paper, then use that pattern to cut your board.

-If you don't have a cutting machine, you can simply create your own pattern onto paper and then cut your materials yourself.



Tiny Village

Now that we have discussed the cutting, let me show you the assembly!

Still working with the simple house here, I took the front and back sections and glued them in a box shape with the side walls using hot glue.



Tiny Village

Next I used my slightly larger roof rectangles and glued them on top.



Tiny Village

The wider house will be assembled in the same way, but what about this one with the funny roof line?

Start your house in the exact same way as the narrow one, creating a box with the front, back and side walls.



Tiny Village

Using your roof pieces, glue them onto the peak leaving an open section.



Tiny Village

Then take another section the same size as the side walls (you'll have to cut one extra) and glue it down as a flat roof.



Tiny Village

And there you have it, ready to decorate miniature houses.
💗I'm thinking these will be turned into candy themed Valentine's Day houses 💗

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!


-Jennifer



Saturday, January 16, 2021

Decorative Cinnamon Rolls

 

Kitchen Decor

Who doesn't love a nice pile of cinnamon rolls on the kitchen counter?  Well now you can have them all the time and they won't go bad, because they aren't real!  Read on to see how easy they are to create:


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Disclosure - This post may contain affiliate links.  If a purchase is made through an affiliate link then (at no additional cost to you) I will receive a commission.  You can read more about affiliate links here.


Kitchen Decor

The first thing that I did was to mix up some salt dough and roll it out.

You can find my recipe in this post.



Kitchen Decor

Next I trimmed my roll-out into a square shape, then sliced that square into strips.  Each strip will end up being one completed cinnamon roll, so keep that in mind when determining your thickness.  I made a total of 8 rolls at the thickness pictured here, using one batch of salt dough.



Kitchen Decor

Fold each strip over lengthwise creating a rounded edge on one side and a pinched edge on the other...



Kitchen Decor

...and then roll the strip into a cinnamon roll shape with the rounded side up and the pinched side on the bottom.



Kitchen Decor

I baked the cinnamon rolls at 250 degrees for about two and a half hours 
(the time could be more or less depending on the thickness of your rolls).

Once baked they were nice and dry, but quite pale looking.



Kitchen Decor

To fix the paleness I watered down some brown water color pigment and brushed it on the rolls. letting it fall into all of the cracks. 

You can find my water color set here.

Tip:  Be careful here as adding water to your salt dough creations will cause them to soften back up.  You will need to plan on letting them sit out to dry thoroughly again before storing them.



Kitchen Decor

To create my icing I poured on some white acrylic paint, letting it pool and spill here and there as real icing would.  To finish I sprinkled on some cinnamon and then let dry.



Kitchen Decor

And here are my completed fake bake cinnamon rolls, I love how yummy they look!

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to fake bake post, thanks for stopping by!


-Jennifer

© Studio 27 by Jennifer Adams 2021

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This post was added to the following link parties:

Wonderful Wednesday (Oh My Heartsie Girl)
Wonderful Wednesday (Penny's Passion)

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This post was featured at 







Saturday, January 9, 2021

Fake Bake Cherry Pie

Kitchen Decor


The new year has come and my fake bake game is still going strong, this time it's all about pies!

You can read about my fake bake cookiesdrinkscakecandies, or cake pops by clicking these links or scroll on to learn about the cherry pie pictured above:


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Disclosure - This post may contain affiliate links.  If a purchase is made through an affiliate link then (at no additional cost to you) I will receive a commission.  You can read more about affiliate links here.


Kitchen Decor

I started my pie with a real pie plate that I picked up at the thrift store.  If you don't want to use  up your bakeware you can always remove the pie once it's baked.  I feel like they are more likely to fall apart that way though, and prefer to keep them inside of a dish.  For this reason I've been stocking up on cheap bakeware while thrifting, you can usually find nice pie plates for a couple of dollars 😊

With my pie plate chosen and ready to go, I whipped up some salt dough and completely filled it up.  Don't worry about looks yet, this will all be covered up in a bit.

You can find my salt dough recipe here.



Kitchen Decor

The next step was to roll out a circle of dough to create the look of the crust...



Kitchen Decor

...and plop it right on top of the filled pie plate.  Pinch the edges a bit to make the crust pretty and trim off any excess.



Kitchen Decor

Next I rolled out another circle of dough and cut it into strips, then woven them on top of the flat crust.  At the edges I just pinched everything together and again cut off any excess.

If you aren't sure about this part, SimplyRecipes.com has a great basket weave tutorial  here.



Kitchen Decor

I then baked until dry - about 4 hours at 250 degrees.



Kitchen Decor

When the pie was cool and dry I painted the filling part with 'Tuscan Red' Apple Barrel acrylic paint.

You'll notice that while the filling looks great painted in, the crust looks pale and undercooked.



Kitchen Decor

To fix this I used a bit of brown water color to add a golden look to the crust.



Kitchen Decor

Lastly I used a bit of joint compound in an icing bag to pipe on what looks like whipped cream, and stuck a faux cherry in the middle.

Sometimes as the joint compound dries, it shrinks up and pulls away from whatever it is touching.  In this case the whipped cream itself came off of the pie and the cherry fell out!  No worries though, a bit of hot glue and everything will go back into place nicely.

You can read more about my joint compound icing here.



Kitchen Decor

I loved how my cherry pie turned out so much that I went ahead and made an apple, chocolate and blueberry as well!  

For the apple I followed the exact same process as the cherry, using a browner shade of acrylic paint for the filling and I skipped the topping.  

The chocolate pie was a bit different.  After making the bottom crust I did not fill the interior of the pie with more salt dough.  Instead I baked the shell until dry and then filled it with joint compound that I tinted with chocolate colored acrylic paint.  After that dried I used puffy paint to create a chocolate drizzle and then topped with joint compound for the whipped cream.

The blueberry pie was constructed almost the same as the cherry and apple, but rather than lattice the top crust I just made a few cut-outs.  After baking I then painted the cut-outs blue and topped with joint compound, using blue beads for the berries.



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I hope you enjoyed this how-to fake bake post, thanks for stopping by!


-Jennifer