If you follow me on Instagram, then you’re likely up to speed on the wooden butterfly house project I’ve been working on over the last few weeks. If you don’t follow me on Instagram (you definitely should!), then you get to experience the whole thing in one fell swoop in this blog post!
Want to make a wooden butterfly house of your very own? If so, head over to Needmore Farms and order a kit today! You can find the kits listed in the “Garden Products” section.
Wooden Butterfly House
I started this project by building my house on my porch with a hammer, nails, sandpaper, some glue, and the fixtures (wooden dowels, hinges, etc.) that were included in the kit. All the banging from my hammer was quite loud, but luckily none of my neighbors complained!
Click below to watch a video detailing the majority of my painting process for my wooden butterfly house.
Going into this project, I knew I wanted to use a similar color palette to the pinecone wreath I made a few weeks back. Not only do I LOVE these colors, but they match my apartment decor to a T — perhaps that’s why I love them so much?
I used a mixture of craft acrylics, student grade acrylics, and artist acrylics because that’s what I had on hand in my desired color palette. I’m sure some artists that encounter this post are slightly horrified that I used Golden Acrylics (these paints are quite pricey) on a wood crafting project, but in my defense, they have great body, which is exactly what I needed to achieve my desired 3D look.
Base Layer
I started by painting the entire house in Martha Stewart crafts paints. I believe I gave the walls of the house 3-4 coats of blush pink. The roof only received one coat of white because I knew that I would be covering it completely in the end.
Tiling the Roof
After the base of the house was completely dry, I began working on the roof. I’ve never tried the tiling technique before (see video above), so I wasn’t really sure what would happen! Luckily, Liquitex paints are super thick, so dripping (which I was really worried about) did not occur! As I mentioned on Instagram, this is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done!
I used almost an entire tube of Liquitex Basics paint on each side of the roof. After applying all my paint with a palette knife, I let each side dry for 12-24 hours before moving on.
Floral Touches
Once the roof was completely dry, I laid the wooden butterfly house on its back and began adding flowers with my palette knife. I’ve made palette knife flowers once before and loved the look so much, I decided I had to add them to my little cottage!
I started by adding flowers to the front of the house and then moved on to the left and right sides as the front began to dry. I didn’t add flowers to the back, since it’s less likely to be seen and these flowers take up a lot of paint!
After the base of each flower dried, I added a center with a complimentary acrylic paint color.
Once the centers were dry, I used a matte clear coat to seal everything! After that dried, my cottage was complete and ready for many butterfly guests!
Final Thoughts
Hands down, this is the most time consuming craft project I’ve made in the longest time. With the thick paint and need for long periods of drying time, it took me over a week from start to finish.
This project was also the most fun and most rewarding thing I’ve done recently too! I had the very best time deciding on the design and then watching my vision come to life with each swash of my palette knife! If you’re a crafter, then you know that our ideas don’t always pan out the way we think they will. Well, this project went exactly as I wanted it to, and I COULD NOT BE HAPPIER with it!
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