DIY

Homemade Gingerbread

Giant Gingerbread house

Have you ever made a gingerbread house and wondered what it would be like to live in one? I’m guessing that most people have not but then again, I’m not most people. Come along as I show you how to make a different kind of homemade gingerbread that you can experience in epic proportions.

The Baking Prep

Before Exterior

Before we even get our faux dough ready to go, we first have to do a little bit of exterior prep. To create this gingerbread facade we first need to build a frame to hold our gingerbread pieces in place. To do this, we used 2’X4’s and did do minimal drilling on the side stucco (easier to patch).

Gingerbread frame

Once the frame was up we took 2″ insulation boards and attached them with screws and washers. The washers make sure that the screws won’t just rip through the insulation, which it would do. Now it’s time to weather proof this exterior and to do so we used a mortar to keep our the moisture.

Exterior protection
Spray paint exterior

Next we paint! Using spray paint I created an ombre effect with a darker color on the outermost portions and moved toward the middle with lighter shades of brown. This technique gives a “baked” look for the gingerbread walls. While the paint dries, start on your other details. Cutting the 90 degree edges off the insulation boards to give a more realistic look, making shapes for over sized peppermints and of course using gap filler for the “icing.” Using the same idea for the icing that will line the path, I added this in-between the gingerbread walls to give the look of the frosting bursting forth.

Faux icing

More Decadent Details

Oversized Gumdrops

Gumdrops are a must in my book for a storybook gingerbread house. Using 5 gallon buckets, some cotton and masking tape we shaped out the gumdrop form. From there we covered the buckets in mortar and once dry, added spray paint and glitter… of course. In this gingerbread house we have elves getting Christmas ready with Santa and to have them appear to peak out of our insulation and foam windows, I hand painted some silhouettes. Adding more hand painted details on the gingerbread directly and definitely needed our “sprinkles” details which were plastic play balls held in place with the spray foam.

Elf painting
giant sprinkles

We finish off our amazing set up with these 3d cookies. Also made from insulation, cut edges and ombre painted like the walls, I then used leftover house paint to create the “royal icing.”

Faux Christmas cookie

The gingerbread house is complete and I could not have done it without supplies from The Home Depot. I was honored to do an in depth blog just for them and you can check it out here.

See it all come together on my youtube in this quick video!

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