My friend Claudie had a christmas party. She had prebuilt Gingerbread Houses. we all showed up with lollies to decorate them. It was a delight to be part of a table of dinner party guests concentrated on making beautiful patterns. Artists, all, although few of them make art on paper or otherwise.
I panicked when asked to bring stuff – I had never decorated a gingerbread house before, and really had no idea where to start. So I approached it like an art project in the end. I spent a pleasant half hour browsing pinterest and taking screenshots (you’ll see them below). i was very taken with the idea of a total witch from Hansel and Gretel edible cottage idea, but also the portico attached to the outside of the house appealed. Since the houses had been pre-constructed there was no option of a tardis, castle or lighthouse as you’ll see in the “inspo” pages.
Were I to do it again (next Christmas, yes, please!) I’d go simpler – my house got the award for “maximalism”. I worked much faster (as is usual with me and making art) than the others did, and my design was more haphazard and less deliberate. As you’ll see, some of the others were meticulous and created amazing patchwork designs, all beautifully spaced. I kind of attacked each surface with gusto and icing mixture, slapping down the glue and adding in bits.
The output of my house included a portico (yay!); each wall was differently decorated, leaning into the froggy, snakey, witchiness of it all. I made a Weber (well, it was supposed to be a chair, but it looked like a Weber, so why fight it), which was by the frog pond/ tiny dinosaur water hole.
What I would do next time:
- think through the colours and shapes I want and buy them in advance – sometimes a colour/style switch was required simply because I’d run out of licorice logs (or they had been “borrowed” to max capacity. So think through requirements / capacity of a pack of lollies. Also survey different places – Aldi was where I went, but if i planned in advance I could try random $2 shops and woolies and coles etc to get a diversity of the right coluors and shapes.
- Licorice logs were very heavy – Matt put them on his roof, and they kept rolling off (i did want to make tree trunks with them but ended up with only 3 tree trunks after he’d raided the supply)
- smarties are better than m&ms because they are flatter (so hold on better). Remember to get wedding cake cachous and such. Flatter is better unless it’s a feature in the yard (and even then they roll around).
- Things like musk sticks could be sliced lengthwise with the right tools, and it would mean less bulk to hold up with icing.
- I don’t have to cover every space, but if i want to do that, think through the colour again so i can have contrast / dark light – the lovely smarties with coloured icing lines that Maddy or Sath did were delightful, and the gingerbread showing through was part of the pattern.
- Claudie says next year we’ll do our own house-building (it was a labour of love for her to pre-do it all!) so think about the shape/style of that
- wear an apron / take off the silk shirt
- I took scissors, do that again! Also skewers
- rinse my hands often during the process (maybe take wipes?)
- think through the trees – the rope I had wouldn’t do the kind of tree I wanted, and by the time I got to the trees I didn’t have enough green rope anyway; i’m quite pleased with the odd tree, propped up by the house itself so the koala has to sit on the roof, but I think I could do better
- consider the surrounds (maybe a bigger platter for the house to rest on?)
Here’s a video of our final output all together on a shelf, with background chatter from the party.
And my inspo, my house and others’ houses.
