Build a Christmas Village: Paper Houses to Make and Decorate for the Holidays (Easy Papercraft) Misc. Supplies – September 6, 2011

I love this product and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in building a Christmas Village on a budget. While Walmart and other stores sell pre-fabricated and painted ceramic villages, this one book provides templates for houses and a church with far more character and charm.The product comes with a book, a tube of plain glue, a couple of tubes of glitter glue, several pop-out sheets for the houses, and a piece of vellum for the windows. The book provides step-by-step instructions and templates to make more houses that a person could photocopy in black and white and decorate in any color if he/she would like. The windows are pre-punched, but to get the glow effect from the inside, just cut a piece of vellum and paste it over the window and insert a battery operated flickering tea light candle.One reviewer said the houses are not sturdy and probably would not last for a season, but they are made with thick card stock and would easily last with care. In addition, someone bemoaned the size of the houses, but again, with the templates in the book a crafter can expand the project to the desired proportions via a copy machine and create several styles and shapes for a village. While Modge Podge or the glue included work just fine for assembling the houses, I used a low temp glue gun for some of the applications. A person of just about any age above five could easily assemble the houses, trees, and snowmen, but detailing the vellum in the windows and adding the snow-covered touches might be a challenge for some.This is an excellent buy for eleven bucks. It provides a creative means to craft a unique Christmas village while also providing additional templates for future creations, and the buildings have far more character and charm than the mass produced versions in chain and hobby stores.

This is a fun family holiday activity. I've purchased this kit each year for the past 3 years. It's an easy to make paper craft that is fun and fairly easy to assemble and decorate. Comes with all of the pieces on printed in full color card stock - punch out and glue together following the directions in the book. Comes with glue and glitter. The glue in the kit is ok, but you might want to have a bottle of Elmer's glue handy. The houses look really nice with the glitter.The book has the same pieces printed so you can use them to cut out and make more houses or use as a template to make more houses. Also has some trees, fences, and snowmen to make.A good project to do with kids - kids will need adult help to assemble the houses. Makes a good family project. You can get little battery operated candles - not part of the kit - to put inside the houses to light them up.

Fun to put together! I would recommend putting the vellum on before building the houses. It would have been much easier to glue it to flat pieces of paper rather than an already built house. Also, the photos show the tudor house with windows and doors cut out but mine were not. Looking at the photos of other people's projects it looks like theirs weren't either. The cover of the book is misleading since it shows a lot of accessories that weren't included in the kit. Overall, it's totally worth the money just not as cool as the cover would lead you to believe.

I enjoyed putting it together, and i enjoyed putting the windows and glitter on. The way the glitter comes n the bottles to blow it on is great. However the paper is thin and the houses and other buildings are not very good in all honesty. It the buildings where cardboard where the structures would be stronger it would be a lot better. It is cute once u get it together but it is nerve racking where the buildings r not strong cause they r paper not cardboard. It would be a great set if it was cardboard. I hope this company will start putting that out instead of paper. I love the paper ones but it will not last for more then one year. I do plan on putting lights in mine though and am looking forward to seeing them lighten up. I guess it just depends on ur point of view and ur ability to be patient with a product.

I have been making these little houses from patterns that I cut out of heavy card stock with an exacto knife. This made the process so very much easier, since they are already cut and scored at the fold lines. Everything you need to make some really cute houses and a church are included. The price was great, too!Update....I originally gave this five stars but........at the back of the book, there are templates for each building. After enlarging and cutting out all the pieces for the church, the pieces did not fit together. I measured the templates in the book and found that they are not to scale to each other, which makes them pretty much useless. Perhaps this flaw explains the low purchase price.But if you only want to build the buildings provided and never use the templates, it will make a cute village.

This wonderful kit comes with a great 68-glossy page colored instruction booklet which includes 13 extra pages of templates that you can Xerox to make more buildings. Your kit includes top quality perforated, scored and prepunched sheets for a Steepled Church, English Tudor Rival, Center-Hall Colonial, Sweet Alpine Home, Picket Fence, Doghouse, Show-Covered Evergreen Trees, Winter Oak Trees and a Snowman. A bottle of glue and 4 bottles of glitter (2-white, 1 blue and 1 red) are included as well. Everything that you need to make this village is supplied. This will look so cute flocked and set up w/LED tea lights inside of each building. This product exceeded my expectations and I was very impressed. The author did an outstanding job on providing crafters of all ages with an easy and timeless kit to enjoy.

I personally would not bother with this again. The water based glue is too wet for the cheap cardboard used and just warps the whole model. The actual cut lines were slightly out of sic with the graphics and the top of the trees haven't been punctured properly so on the top of each branch is 'feathered'. The glitter provided is for some reason dark blue and pink as well as white and are not nice colours at all. The graphics are basic. I suppose you gets what you pay for, but for me this was a waste of time money and effort.

Although I haven't made the Christmas village yet, I was impressed by the quality. It comes in a box with a booklet explaining how to set it up. There are templates in the back of the book in case you want to make it again, but in the box itself are all the pieces needed to make your Christmas village, cut out and ready to go!I have showed it to my 10 year old daughter who is very excited to make it. Roll on December!

Cute!

The pieces punch out nicely, but I still keep a sharp xacto blade handy to deal with any hanging corners. Assembly is simple and the glue that's supplied dispenses a perfect amount when applying a bead to join edges. I haven't used the glitter supplied, I personally find glitter annoying as you find it everywhere no matter how careful you are. A fun craft project, time well spent.

Great activity to do with kids.