How to Make Gingerbread Houses in 3 Easy Steps

Dec. 5

Making gingerbread houses has never been easier! Plus you get to use them every year.

I don’t know about you but we rarely eat your gingerbread houses. We made them every year for display and it gets kinda messy and crumbly. Plus you can never make them as pretty as those Pinterest gingerbread houses! But I’ve cracked the code and it’s actually incredibly easy and fun!

Materials

Wooden bird houses
Krylon Decor Selects Matte Paint and Primer
USG Joint Compound
Ziplock bags
Scissors

Step 1

Spray your birdhouses evenly with spray paint following the instructions on the can.

TIP: Remember to spray paint in a well ventilated area and line your floor with tarp.

STEP 2

Scoop out joint compound into a ziplock bag and adjust the joint compound into the corner of your baggie and twist it like you would a piping bag. Cut a small hole at the corner like you would for icing to pipe a cake!

TIP: Use two bags for different sized piping. One with a small hole for fine details like dots and intricate swirls. The other with a large hole at the tip to emulate fluffy frosting for snowy roof tops or ground covering.

STEP 3

Now for the fun part! Start piping your design on the bird houses. You can choose to keep the designs symmetrical for the perfect gingerbread house design or go as wild and crazy as you’d like.

I used the piping bag with the smaller hole for my more intricate designs like the scallops in the roof top.

Here I used the piping bag with the bigger hole to line the edges of the roof and windows to mimic snow. This is perfect for ground covering as well.

The joint compound dries quite quickly and they hold the shape of your designs. I find that they give you consistency of the joint compound way easier to control than real frosting!

The icicles are my favourite part to make and they were so easy to do with this material! Usually when I try to make icicles with real frosting the icicles always fall down or mush together. Not with this DIY!

This was the second one I made… not as symmetrical but I still love it! The more you make, the better you get. I’m building my own gingerbread house village here.