Making A Painted Christmas House Village: a house log

You folks know I like ceramic things. And miniature anything is 100% cuter than something that is normal-sized (little sliders vs cheeseburgers for example). So it was only a matter of time before this happened. Let us make a little Christmas village, shall we?

It all began with some secondhand tea light holders that are meant to glow if you put little candles inside (some simply have compact holes for a string of lights to poke through instead). I have consistently stopped to stare at these things at thrift stores, because how much lively does it sound to repaint the old tired and chipped ones and bring them back to life in the form of a glad little Christmas town?!

This past weekend I was trolling some buy/sell/trade boards on Facebook and behold: an whole compact tea light village was listed for a mere five bucks! I in short ran to my car.

When I got there, they were in fairly rough shape, but that did not scare me. Nope. I simply hoped to save them and enjoy them and give them a home. Well, another home. For their homes to live within. You know what I mean.

They certainly needed a good scrubbing, and some of the paint had left the building.

Simply in case you are wondering if these are heirloom pieces that I was about to ruin… well, this discovery was fairly hilarious.

Yup, they hail from Dollar Tree. So I was feeling even more liberated and convinced that they needed some enjoy in the form of a good scrubbing and a pleasant fresh paint job. Inspired by all of the lively beach house colors we are considering, I went for a pastel palette using paint that I already had around: white, soft pink, mint green, and of course blue.

One thing I Enjoyed about this, which was simply a glad accident, is that the paint is all a satin finish (as opposed to especially glossy or shiny). It looks so much more convincingly matte and “ceramic” – like they’ve consistently been this way. But once I had them all painted and cute I had nowhere to line them all up in a long row (there are 16 of them!!!), so I chose it would be even sweeter to make a tiered little base for them to sit on.

Brought in challenge: I was too lazy to go to the store, so I raided the scrap wood and my fabric stash to grab some leftover batting. I cut the 2 x 4″ boards into three pieces, all 22″ in length. Then I brought down my staple gun and laid out that leftover batting. I was around 80% sure this was gonna work (come to think of it, that is fairly much my average percentage going into most things, except sewing stuff which rides much lower at an estimated 5% project-success expectation).

See why I hoped three boards of the same length? If you stack them like this, it creates a little tiered platform.

I simply had to cover them with batting for the whole snow effect. I treated the stacked 2 x 4″ boards as one unit and wrapped them with batting (stapled in the back and along the bottom, both of which would be out of view).

I did the same thing with the smaller one and they ended up looking like this.

Around here my faith wavered to around 50% certainty this would be a flop. They were looking a little janky.

But I figured one more layer of batting over the whole thing could unify it for a smoother look. So I stapled another piece to the back, then brought in some staples in the crease and under the front piece to hold everything in place.

To cover the sides, I cut some L-shaped batting pieces and tucked them into the existing layers to make it look wrapped all the way around. I still had one small strip of batting left, so I simply laid it right on the desk in front of my two-tiered structure and voila! I think it turned out fairly cute, especially since the whole village ran me $5 + some things we already had around the house.

So that is the story of my little Christmas village, which I am in fact thinking will eventually become decorations for our beach house. Would not these be so cute living there full time? But then I might need to make another set for our house. BECAUSE I AM A CERAMIC OBJECT CONNOISSEUR. I cannot stop at simply one village. I want an whole county! A tri-state area!

I bet there are plenty of other little ceramic houses out there (try eBay, craigslist, thrift shops, perhaps even Dollar Tree apparently) so go give them the thrill of their life in the form of some paint. Then you too can be the mayor of PastelTown: population 40. Yes, that is my self-elected position, and I landed on that number by estimating that each house has an average of 2.5 people living there. There are also 5 imaginary dogs in case you are wondering.

Psst- Still some time for some last-minute gift shopping and some house shopping if you folks missed those posts. Our new bedroom chandelier came today so we have to hang it and share pics soon! And if you have not seen our 2016 Holiday House Tour, here ya go!