Cardboard Christmas

Lynn and I are collaborating on a fun project. I bought this house a while ago, mainly for the Santa, which I want to reproduce and use in another project. Lynn decided she'd like to build this house and that inspired me to restore it. As you can see, it is quite dirty, missing the base and it is torn on the addition corner. There is a question also about the cut out windows; are they original or cut out later. Pete says most of these candy box houses had all pasted on windows, not two and two like this one. I have to decide how I want to handle this issue. We also have to decide how to make an appropriate base. Lynn is working on making her pattern and I have just finished cleaning and brightening this house.

here's how i handled the baseless candy box for a friend---a plain howard base with white paint and a smattering of multicolor glitter over diamond dust.

Here are pictures of the house after I cleaned it and of the areas that needed repairing. It's a really sturdy house so cleaning, even with a touch of bleach didn't hurt it, but someone had bent the house a lot by glueing together the two walls that had been torn.

Once I started into repairing the walls, glueing joints where needed and adding missing pieces, I could see that it really looked like the cutouts had been added later. I cut cardboard inserts to fit and closed them back up again. Now the cardboard is ready for priming and the house paint for touching up.

That's a beautiful restoration. I love the step-by-step photos.

Awesome restoration so far!

Here is the start of my reproduction of Laurie’s candy box house. I have also attached the pattern. Some pieces will need to be tailored to your house such as the roofs.

Next will be priming, but not the actual candy box, that I will leave unpainted.

Thanks Laurie for a fun project and all the info needed to reproduce this candy box!

I love the Laurie and Lynn candy box restoration, new build. Wonderful projects. They look so good - so authentic. Lucy

We'll, progress is being made on the candy box restoration, but it has not been with out its frustrations. After I added gravel to bare spots and touched up the paint, the house looked a mess. It was splotchy and uneven. So, I scraped off all the gravel I could from the roof and the addition and, after sanding, I started over. I didn't need to touch the white parts of the house because the only new gravel I added was where I patched the cut out window.

I then ground and sifted the gravel until I got a closer match to the original coating and glued it on. I mixed up a very thin batch of paint to cover the blue and gold areas. After painting I blotted the paint to expose a little of the shine of the gravel underneath. Below are pics of the first attempt and my redo. I also finished the base. Just a couple more steps needed now to completion.
First attempt and subsequent reject
Last redo of gravel and paint - still needs a little touch up and then the finishing touches

Laurie - your project seems to be a 'labor of love'! It is amazing what we will go thru to get it 'just right'! Thanks so much for sharing your experience!

John