Making Putz Houses

We have Christmas on our minds all year -- planning, creating, prototyping, collaborating -- but as soon as summer begins our Christmas activities go into overdrive. This time of year we create most of our stock for the upcoming season and our workspace goes from relatively organized to a whirlwind of sparkle, supplies and finished pieces.

The photo above is a view of part of my worktable yesterday. It might be hard to tell, but I was working on these:


Once we decide on a design, we create its pieces and cut them out of sturdy paper board. Next comes painting, putting cellophane in the windows and gluing pieces together. Then we add one or two bottle brush trees. After all glue has dried, we apply "snow," Dresden trims and mica, plus vintage glass beads to decorate the trees.


All in all, it takes about one full day to make one complete house. The most exciting part is waiting for it to get dark so we can put a battery-operated tea light inside and see our finished work!

These two styles aren't listed on our website yet, but you can see what is listed HERE.