Merry Christmas - 2014

We were planning a quiet one at home yet managed to end up with 10 for Christmas day and 15 for Boxing day.

There was swimming and Nerf guns and bike riding and Skylanders and squabbles and cuddles.

There was wallaby watching and bird spotting and a friendly green tree frog watching us from the roof gutter.

There was an enormous turkey and an enormous black forest cake that each lasted at least three meals. There was cool gingerbread house that we didn't eat.

It was lovely to spend it with family and I hope yours was as wonderful as ours.

Merry Christmas.

    

December 2013 - Christmas Canvas Swap

One of the girls in my quilting group inspired several of us to begin collecting art supplies and do a bit of dabbling with multi-media art. We have formed a little off-shoot group (like any of us really need more hobbies!) and catch up every few weeks for some messy art play.

We had our first canvas swap - mostly as a way to get some of us to actually create something with all those supplies we have been accumulating. It was a Christmas themed canvas lucky-dip swap and we ended up with six people participating. Here they all are, lined up for the swap. It is amazing how different they all are.

I got to take home the lovely little Shepherd Canvas made by Rachel. If you click on that link you can go straight to her blog post and read about the thought behind this artwork, and also see a much better photo. He came home with me and took up residence on our mantelpiece among the Christmas decorations until the start of January. He has now moved into my sewing room where he is waiting patiently for his own space on the wall. Jack was very taken with it, running his fingers over it and wanting to know how Rachel made the shepherd stand out from the background - there is a lot of texture in this piece. In the end he decided 'she must be a shepherd-maker' and we settled down to have a bit of fun making up stories about what happened to the sheep.

I made the purple ballerina. She was going to be an angel or Christmas fairy, but the idea sort of morphed into this as I worked on it.
I love the background. I used scrunched up glad wrap over wet acrylic paint to get some depth and movement. I also used purple and silver Inka Gold paint, Perfect Pearls silver metallic powder and Opal Dust iridescent glitter paint to get lots of glimmer happening.
The star is made from moulding paste applied through a stencil and then coloured with silver Viva Inka Gold metallic beeswax-based paint. It is highlighted with plastic gems in shades of purple.
The girl is collaged onto the canvas. Her outfit was made in several layers using scrapbook paper and scrunched tissue paper.
The lettering was traced onto tissue paper and then decoupaged onto the canvas, traced with silver paint pen and then outlined with black ink.


 This was a fun swap and I think everyone enjoyed pushing their boundaries and seeing where it took them. Hopefully there will be more arty swaps in the future.

Advent countdown

Better late than never...

This is really for my own benefit - I've got a photo from each Christmas morning since I started the blog and thought it would be a shame to miss it just because I'm running a month late!

More pre-Christmas craft

This one isn't really my handiwork - but I helped with the paint and the glitter (mainly cleaning up the mess afterwards) and the pins and paid for the whole thing...

On a pre-christmas trip to the shops we spotted a lolly Christmas tree in the window of a local craft shop and Jack decided that we needed one as well.

A foam cone, a foam star, a pack of glitter and some wrapped lollies found their way into the shopping trolly. When we got home I had a few goes at making one like the shop one but gave up in disgust before deciding we could do a better one ourselves.

It looked great on our new table runner!

And this was one of my favorite 'Christmas Moments'....

...Doesn't every nativity have a racing car and an excavator right in the middle?

I didn't manage to get a photo of baby Jesus going for a ride in the back of the jeep although it happened quite often. I also regularly had to find him inside one of the babushka santas during games of 'hide and seek'.

The advent calendar - despite best intentions it wasn't finished to use this year, but I got the last few ornaments sewn together and hung on the tree in time to pack it away for next year. I'm hoping to get a few years use while Jack is still young enough to enjoy it.

This was given to me (partly made - got to love other people's UFOs) a while ago and I've been meaning to finish it of for a while. There are 24 ornaments, each with a ribbon loop. I sewed gold ornamental buttons to the tree for the ornaments to hang on.

I'm thinking of adding a row of red buttons to the bottom border so all the ornaments can be on display while they wait their turn to go on the tree on the correct day.

I still need to add a hanging sleeve but that will wait until next Chrismas when I know where I want to hang it. I might add a bit more quilting and a bit more bling as well - we will see how I feel in November!

And so this is Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! Okay, so I'm a week late but the thought counts, not the time frame.

Our Christmas tree. It was only a small gathering this year, but look at all the presents. And there were even more under there on Christmas morning. The tree may just last another year if we don't water it too much!

There is a little table to the side holding our nativity scene. It gave hours of playtime fun, and it is unusual to see all the people in a straight line. Most of the time they have been 'dancing' in pairs. Jack managed to break both the camel and Joseph in a very short time (ceramic figures and tiled floors do not get on very well). He now thinks Dad can fix anything but is a little young to fully appreciate the magical powers of superglue.

'Santa Claus is coming to town' has been sung from dawn to dusk in our house for several weeks. Finally he came to town and look at the sack full of goodies he left behind.

I made the sack for his first Christmas and the ducky pj pants last year. After I let down the cuffs this summer we've managed another year out of the pjs.

The prize gift this year was a Thomas the Tank Engine umbrella. Rain every day for the last week has made one little boy very happy. Again, last years monster pjs are peaking out at the bottom of the coat - cuffs let down and still fit perfectly.

Another hit present was a kit containing poster paints. We finally gave in and let him loose. Here he is creating some thankyou letters that will be going out in the mail over the next month.

I hope your Christmas was as wondeful as ours, and wish you all the best for a happy 2010!

Pre-Christmas crafting

We didn't have much time for crafty pursuits during November and December mainly due to flu, tonsilitis and other unhealthy afflictions.

However Jack and I did manage to create some very personal cards for all his carers at daycare. There are 14 including one who recently left on maternity leave. As Jack goes five days a week he is looked after by all these lovely ladies and we wanted to say thankyou.

Here is Jack displaying the results.

We painted some sheets of paper then cut out christmas tree shapes and glued them to pre-folded cards. Shiny gold star stickers added a bit of bling, and Jack pilfered a few to decorate his hands. Jack wrote a message inside each card, and I added a translation :)

Jack and his sack

Jack had a great Christmas this year.

Here is a picture of him opening his Santa sack on Christmas morning.

I made the sack for him for his first Christmas last year and it seems that this year he has the hang of it. It is still floating around the lounge room at the moment because I want to make some alterations to the lining. When Jack spots it he goes and looks inside to see if there is anything else in there!

The panel on the front is from a pattern in Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine last year. It was my first attempt at button-hole applique by hand and I was hooked by the time I finished it. The rest of the bag is scrappy patchwork of Christmas fabrics around a few small Christmas panels. It took forever and I hated it from about half-way through until I had it finished. Now I love it but next time I'll use bigger strips. It took hours!

Here is Jack inside his sack last year.