I was looking around my mother’s house, getting reacquainted with items that had surfaced after the holiday decorations came down. I realized how many items I’d made with a cabin or lodge look that were on display in the guest bedroom where I sleep when I visit on weekends.
Some of these things were made especially for the room. When Mom decided to redecorate and chose a cabin theme, she bought some decorative pieces (like birchbark switchplates and a rugged-looking soap dish/lotion holder set for the bathroom) and made new curtains out of sheets she found on sale at a trendy lodge-themed shop. She also retrieved items from around the house that looked good in the room, including some craft and needlework pieces I’d made. I added to these with additional treasures I either purchased as surprises or made (I like the lodge look, too).
The cabin in the photo above is my most recent creation. I actually bought the unpainted cabin at Michael’s in November of 2006 and just got around to doing the project this past fall. (Do you know how much space an unpainted log cabin takes up when you’re already crowded in your tiny apartment?)
I wish I’d thought to take a picture of the cabin in its naked condition for a before/after contrast. If you’ve ever shopped at Michael’s, especially in the unpainted wood section, you may have seen these cabins on the shelves.
Here’s the process I used for creating the rustic abode above:
First, I basecoated the logs, inside and out, with chocolate brown acrylic paint. The roof and base of the cabin I painted the same hunter green.
Next, I filled in between all the logs (exterior only) with spackle and let dry. I hot-glued small pebbles (also a craft store purchase) to the chimney, then spackled between those as well. I rinsed the entire cabin with a wet rag to remove the smears and specks of spackle and to take the finish of the paint down a little.
Next I dry-brushed sparingly over the logs with dark charcoal gray, followed by highlights of tan, to give the logs more depth and texture. I created shingles on the roof by side-loading a flat brush with charcoal gray and shaping the outlines of the shingles; then I dry-brushed a lighter shade of green individually over each shingle, followed by a few tan highlights (using a very light touch). Finally, I applied antique gel over the entire cabin and wiped it off, which pulled all the colors together and aged the appearance a bit. It also removed a little of the paint here and there in the process, which was the distressed effect I wanted.
For my landscaping, I hot-glued more of the little pebbles around the base of the cabin, including a flat one in front of the door to serve as a step. My shrubbery was lengths cut from a roll of miniature boxwood, hot-glued into place. (It doesn’t show in the photo, but I also made small trees and groundcover by either twisting the boxwood into a pointed shape or layering it along the base of the cabin, then hot-gluing to the base or cabin wall.) The evergreen is simply a miniature tree from my stash of Christmas trims.
The curtains wound up being more challening than any other part of the cabin. Not so much challening as awkward — even my short fingers had trouble maneuvering those bits of homespun through the openings to glue them along the windows. I used tacky glue, and often the cloth would adhere to my finger instead of the wall. I never did get them to hang the way I wanted, but they look okay.
It was tempting to make this a winter cabin with snow, especially since Christmas was on its was when I was working on this. I decided I wanted this to be a summer cabin instead, a little mountain place above a pristine lake, with a cool, pine-scented breeze billowing those curtains. This way the cabin can stay on display throughout the summer, inspiring refreshing visions of a mountain holiday when the temperature outside is 90+ degrees and soggy with humidity.
