How to make a model house with ice cream sticks

My Son's Dream house for school project

There are a lot of crafts that can be done with ice cream sticks, like photo frame, basket, vase, lamp shade etc. But i was not bothered about this amazing craft material untill my son was assigned with a school project last month. The project is to make a dream home. I was thinking of various materials like cardboard, chart paper, thermacol etc. When i googled, there was a lot of house models and  to my surprise some of them were made by ice-cream sticks. This triggered my idea bulb..

Materials used in this project:

1. Ice-cream sticks 

2. Hot glue gun 

3. Thermacol sheet - for base

4. Green coloured garbage bag

5. Good quality sturdy Scissors

Places i got my materials:

Ice-cream sticks, glue gun, scissors and thermacol sheets are easily available in any craft store. I bought my sticks from Pandian stores @ T.Nagar, Chennai. I love this shop, most of the materials are reasonably priced and the staffs are friendly. 50 sticks were bundled together and sold @ Rs. 7 / bundle, pretty cheap compared to other shops which sold @ Rs. 15 / bundle. I ordered my glue sticks through Amazon.in and for the green colored garbage bag, i had them stocked in my home and it came handy.

Building of the house:

This model was my dream home which i wanted to construct in the future. The sticks were placed next to each other and hot glue was applied on them. First the base was formed. The sticks were cut to the desired length and all the walls were formed with the sticks. Then the walls were stuck to the base with the hot glue. Fevicol(PVA glue) was not used because of its longer sticking time. Hot glue instantantly binds.

 The model house was placed on cardboard and thermacol sheet and fence was fixed. For the grass, green coloured plastic garbage bags were folded and striped as small as possible as confetties. PVA glue was mixed in water and using a small sprayer(i have used an empty Colin bottle for spraying purpose), sprayed the glue water on the thermacol base where grass is required. The green confetties are then sprinkled over the glue sprayed area. This will take atleast 1 to 2 hours to dry.

It took 2 days (excluding material buying time) and 900 sticks to complete this project. My son loved this house and it was considered as one of the best dream house models in his school. Hope we construct a similar real home in the near future.