How to Make Houses Out of Toothpicks

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Things You'll Need

  • Toothpicks

  • Craft glue

  • Paint

  • Paintbrush

  • Shears

Build a house with toothpicks

Building a house out of toothpicks takes practice, patience and a lot of care to keep the glue from creating a mess. Although you can use either round or flat toothpicks, the flat kind will provide an easier surface for gluing. The round type will give your house more of a log cabin look, with small, rounded "logs," whereas the flat type will create more of a board-style house. Before trying to create multistory houses with doors and windows, start with a simpler house design. Then with practice, you can increase the lengths of the sides and construct additions to your house.

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Step 1

Lay out four toothpicks in the shape of a square for your foundation. Glue the four corners together. The ends will, by necessity, overlap just a little.

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Step 2

Build up the sides by laying four more toothpicks horizontally around the base. If using flat toothpicks, be sure to stand them on edge so that the wider, flat sides run vertical. Lay the first pair on opposite sides, and glue them to the frame using your brush. Then lay the remaining pair on opposite sides.

Step 3

Continue laying toothpicks around the square to make the house as tall as you want it to be.

Step 4

Construct a peaked roof frame at one end of the house by gluing the bottoms of two toothpicks to the top of the walls and the tops of the toothpicks together to form a point. Next, position two more toothpicks to form a point on the opposite side of the house. Now, across the top of the two points, glue another toothpick to make the crest.

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Step 5

Lay toothpicks along the slanted sides of the peaks, gluing each to fill in the sides of the roof. Do both sides, leaving the front and rear triangular shapes open.

Step 6

Snip toothpicks with shears to fill in the open triangle sides. By starting at the corner, each toothpick will get gradually longer until you reach the peak. Glue the top of each snipped toothpick to the roof frame and the bottom to the top of the square house frame.

Step 7

Paint the toothpick house, giving the walls and roof different colors. Paint on a door and windows.

Tip

If you don't have a brush to apply the glue with, use another toothpick, cotton swab or small dabs directly from the bottle.

Allow at least 3 to 5 minutes for each dab of glue to settle and dry before moving on. Clear tacky glue is ideal for this type of project.

Let the edges of the roof hang over the walls slightly in order to form eaves.

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