Make it in an afternoon - zero calorie gingerbread houses

Hi Leo here. This week I've been indulging in some Christmas crafty fun, (in between the boring chores of pre-Christmas week). I do love and hate this time of year, the build up to Christmas as I tend to have all these plans of things to make and do and then end up doing hardly any of it because of other things that come up first. This year I've tried to be more realistic and pick out things to do that fit in with being busy. I've already planned to do December Daily actually after Christmas this year, in the lull week between Christmas day and new year so I can actually sit down with a stack of photos and just enjoy the process of cutting and sticking, nothing complicated or timed or pre-planned just plain and simple scrapbooking! On top of that I wanted to do some other papercraft projects and I stumbled on the glitter houses on Pinterest and just knew I had to make something like that. It also did two birds with one stone because I was going to make a gingerbread house but again, time (and the lack of wanting to actually eat the gingerbread and cost of buying all the junk to make one) meant I could indulge in some mini house making without having to do the whole baking thing, yay paper!
Keeping with the whole 'keep it simple' 'streamline your time' vibe I went looking online for a house shape cut file to use with my Silhouette. I ended up getting one from the Silhouette store as they have a sale on at the moment and you can pick things up for pence. I went with the 'tea light village' set, https://www.silhouettedesignstore.com/view-shape/69143
There are lots to download free in both cut file format and regular old hand cut format all over the internet too. You could also of course just do a simple shape of your own, (they're just the basic cross shape box templates with holes cut out for windows) and use punches for the window holes. It's totally up to you how simple or not you make it.

I used the Basic Grey paper from the Christmas 'Feeling Festive' kit and the 'Twinkle' paper from the 'Firework' main kit to make the house bases just because I wanted a gingerbread feel for the houses and the colours of these worked best. The roof pieces I cut from white cardstock and covered with glitter applied using Modge Podge.

The idea of the houses is that you can put an LED tealight inside so the bottom is open. To add some extra decoration I've used some of the Fancy Pants die cut ephemera to place inside the houses and around them. I've used a piece of white cardstock as the base and then made little bits of cardstock glued to the backs then folded and glued to the base to make the tree ephemera stand up.

Here's the finished project,

The glue still needs to dry a bit more but I had to get a photo quick before the light went! All in these took about an hour to put together and a half hour to cut them out so it's defo a project you can fit into an afternoon. Much quicker than a real gingerbread house and zero calories!

I'll be back very soon with some last minute gift wrapping ideas using the new kits.

xx Leo