I’ve always loved the look of a gingerbread house, and I adore a Christmas village scene, but I haven’t had a village for several years. Gingerbread houses are fun, but all too often are temporary because they are made from actual gingerbread, icing and candies. I wanted a Christmas village made up of gingerbread houses, but one I could bring out each year. And, of course, you know I’m all about recycling, so using milk and juice cartons was exactly what I wanted to do.
Gingerbread Village from Recycled Milk Cartons
It’s not uncommon to make a gingerbread house from an empty milk carton. Kids do it all the time. But as much as I loved all the gingerbread houses my children made over the years, I was looking for something the adults could do. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I love to make something from nothing. So if you want to use wooden houses like my (Birdhouse Gingerbread House), go for it, but this village is made from garbage. ;-)
I’ve been saving these milk and juice cartons for a while now. I originally planned on making a regular Christmas village scene, but then I came across The World’s Largest Gingerbread Village by Chef Jon Lovitch on #YahooDIY and that inspired me to make gingerbread houses instead! Of course, Jon’s houses are made the traditional way, from edible items… all 152 of them! They are actually trying to break the Guinness World Record. They actually set the record last year with their first village and are looking to beat themselves this year. Incredibly impressive, I wish I could have seen that in person!
For my gingerbread house village, I didn’t want to have to go spend a fortune on faux candy from the craft store, so I decided I had to make due with what I had on hand. Everything was either recycled or already in my craft stash.
Project Cost: $0.00
Note: some links below are affiliate links. That means if you happen to buy something, a small percentage of that sale goes back into this site, which enables me to continue to bring you free tutorials such as this one. So, thanks!
To make these gingerbread houses you will need:
- Empty milk and/or juice cartons, rinsed well and dried
- Paper napkins or tissue paper
- Cereal box cardboard (roofs)
- Buttons in a variety of colors and sizes
- Decoupage medium
- Light brown and white acrylic craft paint
- Dimensional Effects
- SnowTex or White Texture Effect
- White paint pen
- Craft jewels
- Faux candy canes
- Beads
- Yellow card stock
- Tools: scissors, paintbrush, hot glue gun, sandpaper, palette knife, Black marker
I used milk and juice cartons and even empty cream cartons. Make sure you rinse them out really well and let them dry.
Open the tops of the cartons. At the “pour” side, cut the upper corner triangles out, leaving a little border around the “pouring” triangle. Repeat on the other side.
Hot glue the pouring triangle to the sides as shown to create the eves.
Repeat this for all of your cartons. They won’t be pretty, and that’s okay. And if the glue isn’t holding well at the top, go ahead and tape or staple them to keep them shut. You are going to cover that anyway.
Paint a thin layer of decoupage medium onto one side of the milk carton and place paper napkin over the top, gently smoothing it out. Continue this process until the entire carton is covered.
I actually used some brown napkins from Taco Bell. :) They have kind of a cool texture to them, but you can use any paper napkin or tissue paper. The idea is to give you a porous surface to paint on, as the actual milk carton surface is too slick.
After the cartons have dried, decoupage one more layer of napkin onto each one.
Paint each of the houses light brown. Mine only needed one coat.
While the houses are drying I made the roofs. Mine are made from cereal box cardboard.
FIRST I folded the card board and made sure they fit properly. Then I sanded the printed side of the cardboard to knock off the shine and remove much of the color. I actually used Gesso to paint the cardboard white, but white paint will be fine too. I painted them so I wouldn’t have to use too much of the Dimensional Effects as the printed cardboard can show through, I didn’t want to take the chance of running out! Glue them to the top of the houses.
Use a palette knife to spread on the Dimensional Effects. It’s creamy, so it spreads like cake frosting.
Here’s an example of what you can do with it! See how it looks like cake?
You will want to do one roof at a time so that the Dimensional Effects doesn’t start to dry before you have a chance to add the buttons. Simply press the buttons gently into the Dimensional Effects, no glue needed.
I made my own peppermint candies from a bunch of white shank buttons I had. I simply used a red Sharpie and a green Sharpie to add lines around the outside of each one! I also cut the shanks off.
All that’s left to do is decorate. I don’t have a bunch of step photos of the process because it will be different for each person and each house. Some windows I used card stock and a black marker, other windows I drew on with a white paint pen (I used Elmer’s by the way, I don’t like the Sharpie paint pens).
Something to note, I decorated the bottom of all of my houses with craft jewels. That gave each house enough weight to keep them standing. If you decide to decorate yours differently and don’t weigh them down that way, you can always add a bag of rice to the carton. If you’ve already decorated it, simply cut a hole in the bottom, add the bag of rice and tape it back up. No one will see the bottom anyway!
It always helps me to draw out some ideas first. Search Pinterest or the web for gingerbread houses and you’ll find plenty of inspiration for designs!
The final step for my village was to hot glue all the houses to a piece of foam core board and create a pathway using different colored buttons. Now I can simply lift the entire village in one motion.
Here are the individual houses if you need some inspiration for house designs.
I hope you enjoyed this project! I’m super excited that I have a gingerbread village that I can pull out of the attic year after year and don’t have to worry about candy rot!
Have fun!
More Holiday Crafts
- Ugly Sweater Ornaments
- Homemade Button Christmas Cards
- 10 Fun Holiday Crafts for Your Kids – on #YahooDIY
- All of my Christmas craft ideas
More gingerbread fun:
- Rice Krispie Treat Gingerbread Men
- Soft Gingerbread Cookies with Chocolate Drizzle
- Soft Gingerbread Football Cookies
- Bread Tag Gingerbread Men
- Empty milk and/or juice cartons, rinsed well and dried
- Paper napkins or tissue paper
- Cereal box cardboard (roofs)
- Buttons in a variety of colors and sizes
- Decoupage medium
- Light brown and white acrylic craft paint
- Dimensional Effects
- Snow Texture
- White paint pen
- Craft jewels
- Faux candy canes
- Beads
- Yellow card stock
- Tools: scissors, paintbrush, hot glue gun, sandpaper, palette knife, Black marker
- Make sure you rinse your cartons out really well and let them dry.
- Open the tops of the cartons. At the “pour” side, cut the upper corner triangles out, leaving a little border around the “pouring” triangle. Repeat on the other side.
- Hot glue the pouring triangle to the sides as shown to create the eves.
- Repeat this for all of your cartons. They won’t be pretty, and that’s okay. And if the glue isn’t holding well at the top, go ahead and tape or staple them to keep them shut. You are going to cover that anyway.
- Paint a thin layer of decoupage medium onto one side of the milk carton and place paper napkin over the top, gently smoothing it out. Continue this process until the entire carton is covered.
- I actually used some brown napkins from Taco Bell. :) They have kind of a cool texture to them, but you can use any paper napkin or tissue paper. The idea is to give you a textured surface to paint on, as the actual milk carton surface is too slick.
- After the cartons have dried, decoupage one more layer of napkin onto each one.
- Paint each of the houses light brown. Mine only needed one coat.
- While the houses are drying I made the roofs. Mine are made from cereal box cardboard.
- FIRST I folded the card board and made sure they fit properly. Then I sanded the printed side of the cardboard to knock off the shine and remove much of the color. I actually used Gesso to paint the cardboard white, but white paint will be fine too. I painted them so I wouldn’t have to use too much of the Dimensional Effects, I didn’t want to take the chance of running out! Glue them to the top of the houses.
- Use a palette knife to spread on the Dimensional Effects. It’s creamy, so it spreads like cake frosting.
- You will want to do one roof at a time so that the Dimensional Effects doesn’t start to dry before you have a chance to add the buttons. Simply press the buttons gently into the Dimensional Effects, no glue needed.
- I made my own peppermint candies from a bunch of white shank buttons I had. I simply used a red Sharpie and a green Sharpie to add lines around the outside of each one! I also cut the shanks off.
- All that’s left to do is decorate. This will be different for each person and each house. Some windows I used card stock and a black marker, other windows I drew on with a white paint pen (I used Elmer’s by the way, I don’t like the Sharpie paint pens).
- Something to note, I decorated the bottom of all of my houses with craft jewels. That gave each house enough weight to keep them standing. If you decide to decorate yours differently and don’t weigh them down that way, you can always add a bag of rice to the carton. If you’ve already decorated it, simply cut a hole in the bottom, add the bag of rice and tape it back up. No one will see the bottom anyway!
- It always helps me to draw out some ideas first. Search Pinterest or the web for gingerbread houses and you’ll find plenty of inspiration for designs!
- The final step for my village was to hot glue all the houses to a piece of foam core board and create a pathway using different colored buttons. Now you can simply lift the entire village in one motion.
Thank you Yahoo! for sponsoring this post. While this was a sponsored opportunity from Yahoo!, all content and opinions expressed here are my own.
Amanda Formaro
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Is it ok to use one of these pictures to show my art class students what we will be doing in class on facebook? I will reference your blog! I just love these :)
Sure, just please include a link back to this post when you share the photo :) Thanks!
Hi I make gingerbread house front to hang on my apt door from cornstarch clay it is very nice and can be used every year
Oh my gosh. These are so well done I didn’t even notice that the candies weren’t candy but buttons and trinkets! Great craft, I am definitely pinning for later.
Thanks Emily, so nice of you to say!