Popsicle Stick Gingerbread House Ornaments
Make these sweet popsicle stick gingerbread house ornaments with a hidden picture behind the door!
Materials
- Popsicle sticks
- Wallet-sized photo
- Wooden beads
- Wooden discs
- Puffy paint
- Glitter
- Faux leather, foam, felt or fabric (for the door)
- Red & white twine
- Brown, red, white, various rainbow color paint
- Mod Podge
- Strong non-toxic glue
- Hot glue (You could use the strong glue for this whole project, but I always like to use hot glue to speed things up!)
Instructions
To construct the gingerbread house:
- You’ll need eight popsicle sticks to create the base of the house. I trimmed mine to be about 2/3 of the original length, but you can make them whatever length you choose! Be sure to save the trimmings if you want to make gumdrops like I did.
- Line up the eight popsicle sticks and glue another popsicle stick horizontally across the bottom to glue them all together. (You’ll have to trim the popsicle stick so that it fits accordingly across the back of them!) I used hot glue for this, but you could use any strong glue.
- Flip the piece over and glue another popsicle stick across, this time along the top.
- Glue two popsicle sticks to the top, forming a triangle. Again, you’ll want to trim these based on how tall you want the roof to be!
- Flip the piece back over and fill in the space of the triangle by gluing popsicle sticks horizontally across. This is a great way to use up some of the scrap pieces you trimmed off of the other popsicle sticks! Now you’re ready to paint!
To make the "candy" decorations:
- Peppermints: I used round disk beads that we already had. Painted a red and white swirl and let dry. Then I added iridescent glitter. To do so, I mixed some glitter with mod podge and painted it over the whole thing. Helps the glitter stay on better!
- Gumballs: If you have or can find already colorful beads, that makes this super easy. But if you have plain wooden beads or spheres, you can paint them any color you want! To paint the beads, I slid a bunch onto a bamboo skewer to make it easier to paint them all at once. Then slid them off carefully and let them dry.
- Gumdrops: Grab the trimmings from your other popsicle sticks and use those for this part. Cover the small end pieces with puffy paint to give them some texture. Let dry. Then paint with a iridescent glitter/mod podge mixture and let dry again. Trim down to size. Note: Some may crack slightly on the back when cutting, but the puffy paint should hold them together and you’ll never know once they’re glued onto the houses!)
To decorate the gingerbread house:
- Paint the house brown and let dry.
- Decide what size/shape you want the door to be and cut out a template.
- Use the template to cut out your photo as desired.
- Glue the photo to the bottom center of the gingerbread house.
- Decorate with the candies you created. For our 3 year old, I put the dots of glue on the pieces and then he glued them onto the house! Adjust accordingly depending on age.
- Cut out a door from the material of your choosing using the same template you used for the photo.
- Add trim to the door if desired. I added a red & white twine border and a bead for a door knob.
- Run glue along the back left side of the door and glue along the left edge of the photo.
- Glue a loop of twine or ribbon to the back of the top of the house for hanging.