My Sweet Little Glitter Cottage & Tutorial To Make Your Own!

I can't tell you how much been looking forward to sharing this project - I truly loved making it!  My Little Glitter Cottage:)  I first found out about this sweet craft via one of my advertisers, Sugar Pink Boutique, and was totally enchanted with the idea.  Pretty like gingerbread houses, but permanent and with that magical extra shimmer:  

So when I bought some sweet, crafty goodies like glass glitter, berry beads and tinsel from her shop I knew I had to make one of my own.

It was so much fun I plan to make a little village of them.  I thought I'd share how I made mine for anyone else who wants to give them a try.  Being easy, fun and lovely to look at, it's a really wonderful seasonal project.  I started out with this plain wooden gingerbread house from Michael's - got it on sale for $2.50:

Then I painted it with a foam brush and two coats of acrylic craft paints - some of them were left over from a stenciling project...from 9 yrs ago.  I know, the fact that I even have paints that old means I'm a total crafting packrat.

This was my favorite part - I "iced" the house with wall spackle piped on using a sandwich bag with a corner cut off.  The spackle has the same consistency as royal icing so the effect is pretty realistic and it dried about as fast.  

Next, working quickly and one side at a time, I brushed on a thin coat of Mod Podge with another foam brush:

and sprinkled on german glass glitter - the more the better and so much sparklier than regular glitter:

Once everything dried, it was time to decorate.  I used a cotton swab and dabbed on some tacky glue to attach the oblong beads for the "jimmies" on the roof:

I used these sugary looking berry beads along the trim:

Small assorted beads decorated the snowman, tree and door and some lovely iridescent wired tinsel around the base for a finishing touch:

I unrolled some batting to go underneath and added the candy light bulbs and sweets garland I also got from Sugar Pink Boutique to make our mantle have a full sparkle effect:

And with twinkle lights under the batting, when lit up at night, my mantle looks like a magical winter wonderland:)

Sharing this with my FAVE LINK PARTIES too so click HERE to check them out!