A Completed Putz Church

Busy times around here now, especially since Christmas is two months from today.  Seems like it sneaks up faster and faster every year! Here's how the little church from the previous post turned out.  We're also introducing a new cottage this year:

Is it starting to feel like the holidays for you yet? I know it's early but I'm thinking about putting my tree up soon :)

Six Months Until Christmas!

Hard to believe that it's only six months until Christmas -- that means decorations come out even sooner! Above is one of my favorite shots of one of our trees all lit up with a roaring fire. The mantel has a snowy village scene with clusters of vintage decorations -- spun cotton animals,
pine cone carolers and snowmen, bottle brush trees -- mixed in with putz houses and tinsel trees. Ah, decorating... I can't wait!

Quiet Village

For the last few days construction has been in full swing on more putz houses, this time a group of green village cottages. Above, a shot of my work table with the group freshly painted and assembled . The next step is adding fences and trees, then snow. In a short time they'll look like this:

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.