I love creating Christmas decor and this little Gingerbread Christmas Jar Village is one of my favorite projects. I shared it here last year and many you have been asking for the tutorial again, so I wanted to pop in and post it again!
It is perfect to do with the kids and I love that it is more contained for less mess over through the season (less likely for little fingers to touch- or in my case, less likely for my son to lick off the icing)! If you make your own little gingerbread jar village, please tag me on Instagram- I would love to see it!
I have a fun holiday decor project for you today that is perfect to do by yourself or with little ones, and is easy to customize to fit your decor using just a few basic finds. This gingerbread house DIY project is pretty simple and not hugely time consuming, so I hope you will love recreating it in your home!
Supplies
(affiliate links for your convenience)
- Gingerbread House Kit (found here)
- Assorted Jars with Lids- (here, here)
- Epsom Salts or Sugar ( I used 3 big bags of salts from Walmart and then we had nice baths after the season with them)
- Bottlebrush Trees (similar here)
- Piping bag with fine tip (optional, fine one here)
- Paper Pulp Old World Santas (here)
- Red Stripe Linen Table Runner (found here, or this one is really pretty too)
It is important to let the gingerbread houses dry completely before adding them to your winter jars, so I recommend beginning by assembling and decorating your houses. To assemble houses, follow the instructions in the Gingerbread Village kit (or you can make your own). I opted for an all- white theme with my gingerbreadhouses, so I discarded the candies that came in the kit. Keep in mind that I used one house per jar for my village- so I ended up using 2 of the kits. I also opted to use my own piping bag so I could use a finer tip for decorating.
Once all of the gingerbread houses are assembled, decorated and dried, begin to fill your jars with epsom salts until you have the desired amount of "snow." I tried to mimic a snowy hillside by making sure that my salts were not flat, but rather had peaks and valleys within each jar. I think it made a huge difference in the look of the finished jars.
Place one of your gingerbread houses in each jar. Add one or two small metallic bottlebrush trees and even an old world santa.
Set your village on your favorite holiday table runner and light a few votives for ambiance. I sprinkled some cranberries around it just for a fun pop of red.
Overall, this project was relatively quick and easy and I loved the result. I think this would be such a fun tradition to do with the family each year- maybe even have each member of the family decorate their own jar in the village.
You can see the tutorial for how I hang my wreaths HERE.
Sources for my Christmas Decor are listed HERE.
My tutorial was originally published over on the World Market blog.
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