Kids’ Christmas Scrapbook Redux

Each year I select a handful of photos to pull from digital photo purgatory. They’re printed! They’re hardcopy! It’s just like ye olden days when photo finishing was the norm. These photos go into the Christmas photo album/scrapbook I’m making for my kids. I’d like to have a time capsule like this for my own childhood, but since I can’t go back in time, I’m doing the next best thing by making one for them.

Here’s a peek at the first year’s entry. These pages are filled with photos, catalog clippings, Christmas cards, photo captions, and some doodles I did.

This spread includes family photo cards, gift tags, and scraps of that year’s wrapping paper.

I always include the family holiday card, holiday stamps, and gift tags from loved ones.

Now that my kids are old enough, they like to help with design and layout.

Here Claire and Lachie make their first ornaments (glitter glue on pinecones); there’s cute stuff they said (Claire called a gingerbread house a “candy barn”); and Christmas morning photos.

Visiting the Macy’s 8th Floor Auditorium with family during a Minneapolis visit. One of my favorite childhood activities, back when Macy’s was still Dayton’s.

Snow Day! This spread includes ornaments the kids made.

Two Bespoke Ornaments

As a kid, the month of December seemed to crawled along, though it was full of the same advent-calendar-opening, Christmas-special-watching, cookie baking, shopping, decorating, and crafting I do nowadays. Why does time move so much faster now? Might have something to do with the couple of kids around here now. I don’t even know how many ornaments I had to reglue and repair this year, thanks to Hurricane Lachlan, one of the two 3-year-olds in residence.

At any rate, I wanted to share a couple of new ornaments I made in December:

This is a Baby’s First Christmas ornament, inspired by Irmi Nursery Originals and Erzgebirge figures, and a similar ornament I used to make as a child. I painted a bead for the baby’s head, and tucked him into a walnut shell bed with cotton and felt “linens.”

This one is just plain weird, so let’s just get that out of the way upfront. It’s a Scotch Egg, about two inches in diameter, created to commemorate the “247th anniversary” of a Christmas party I’m lucky enough to attend each year, where homemade scotch eggs figure into the menu. It has a dusting of glitter because it’s an ornament, after all.

And the back side view, with the date span.

This year the kids got to help with the photo ornament we now send to the closest family members each year, but that will have to wait for a future blog post because I keep forgetting to take photos during the 39 seconds of daily natural light we have in the dead of winter.

Brooklyn Flea

Recently I checked out the indoor winter digs of Brooklyn Flea with my family. It sounds corny, but there truly is something for everyone at this thing. If you don’t love old things, certainly you love new food! By that I mean there are terrific food stalls on the lower level. Also, the Williamsburg Bank is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. I mean, soak in this:

Those are seriously fantastic mosaics, and some not-untall ceilings.

Oh, and all the neat stuff back at eye level included seasonal Xmas goodness, including these spun-cotton lovelies:

And the fantastic deadstock, perfectly “curated,” had to be that now-defunct store Alphaville, in Flea form! (And yes, it was!)

And I got to geek out a little with Sandy Lee, the Gingerbread Entrepreneur behind Leckerlee. Her lebkuchen are the real deal, and I am happy to report they are indeed lecker. (That’s tasty, y’all.) On top of that, her branding and packaging are pitch-perfect. With a nod to the beautiful, traditional, collectible tins found in Germany, the graphic design loveliness that permeates her brand respects that history but makes it new.

The Flea is a great place to wrap up that Christmas shopping that needs doing!

 

Martha Stewart Craft Sale* this Sunday

A little birdy from the Crafts Department at Martha Stewart just tipped me off about this sale. (Tip o’ the bone folder to Laura K.!)

The details:

The Divine Craft Sale

Sunday, December 11th
Divine Studios
21 East 4th Street (at Lafayette)
11AM-6PM

*Okay, so it’s not THE Martha Stewart Holiday Craft Sale at Starrett-Lehigh that I have come to know and love for the past two years, but it’s got most of the same Craft/Design/Collector/Expert luminaries who make the MSLO sale pop.

I’m sure I’m not the only craft nerd and Martha fangirl who gets a thrill out of talking to Real Live Elves from the Martha TV show, and from high, high up on the magazine masthead. And who can forget last year’s pan after pan of Martha Stewart Craft Glitter that guests to the MSLO Craft Fair were invited to indulge in, to decorate their own make-and-take glass ball? There was even one crafter whose name rhymes with “Smeather Donohue” who saved the wee bit of glitter that came off that ball for a subsequent craft project. Hardcore crafter, and thrifty to boot.

So if your December, and possibly your heart, had a tiny hole in it where the Martha Craft Sale should have been, I hope you feel better now. (I do.)

 

Yule Love These Christmas Stockings

Attention, S. Claus: Henry and Billy have new stockings this year! Their mom commissioned these seasonal toy and treat vessels, and they shipped out today.

As usual, I made these from wool and wool-blend felt with a healthy dose of beads and sequins, and worked closely to meet the requested design specs.

Below: Train detail made from felt, beads, and sequins; a fire truck; and three Christmas books.

Below: A checkerboard;  wee cars and trucks.

Below: A famous licensed character trades his light saber for something a bit more seasonal.

Below: Peppermints, gumdrops, pillow candy, and loads of beads.

Below: A happy gingerbread man. The shape is traced from a cookie cutter, but this cookie will last longer.

Just 22 days to go for the inaugural stuffing!

Brooches from Thanksgivings Past

In the 80′s, I was a polymer clay freak. I used to make tons of things, including pins and magnets, which were mostly Santa, E.T., and Garfield. (Did I mention it was the 80′s?) Anyway, more recently, I tried my hand at some Thanksgiving pins, and I came across some of them while unpacking a box of old crafts.

This turkey is all clay, except for his painted, wire feet. He’s about 2″ tall.

This cornucopia is all clay. It’s about 2″ wide.

Thanksgiving-y, aren’t they?