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I’ve just started work on a custom stocking for a child who is still in utero. I haven’t met the mother, but we have a mutual understanding of the role a really good Christmas stocking can play in a child’s life. I was so enchanted with my own stocking*, an Edna Looney design made for me by my mother, that I am now designing stockings of my own.
So, how do you design a child’s Christmas stocking? What a privilege, and what responsibility! I summoned a heap of warm childhood Christmas memories and started putting them together until I came up with: mom and child mice baking cookies together.
First I made a sketch of the important parts: Mom, child, table with cookie dough rolled out, and in the background, a peek at a Christmas tree.
The photo at top shows the early progress, and the details that are starting to emerge: Mom has a vintage mercury glass bead necklace; the gingerbread dough is rolled out on a floured, fanciful table.
* My childhood stocking:
My friend Molly and I were rifling through the drawers at Parcel today, where she found these glasses for her nearsighted finger.
These logs are prototypes for placecard holders. They’re a couple inches wide, hand-painted and embellished with reindeer moss and plaster mini-mushrooms from “Western Germany”, the package says. Sometimes first drafts are a little rough around the edges, but I love these little guys. I plan to try a birch version, too.
All kids love log!
I’m mad for elaborate step-by-step instructions (especially Jennifer Murphy’s!) and since the velvet acorn instructions were so popular, I had a go with my pinecone turkey. As if creating these funny little beasts weren’t reward enough: fresh pinecones give off the most wonderful, sweet sap smell when drilled.
Tools and Materials
Pinecone (about 1 1/2″ in diameter)
Brown crepe paper
White chenille stems (pipe cleaners)
Acrylic paint in white, brown, red, orange and black
Tacky glue
1/4″ wide paint brush
Scalloped pinking shears
Scissors
Wire cutters
Pliers
Dremel drill with 3/64″ drill bit or similar
(Supplies and instructions for one tom turkey. Make multiples of the components if you are creating a flock.)
1. Cut 1 1/2″ tall strips of brown crepe paper, 10″ wide. Make sure the grain is top to bottom so it has a little stretch from left to right. Scallop the top.
2. Paint the tips of the “feathers” with brown acrylic paint.
3. Paint a highlight with white paint on top of the brown paint. Cut the 10″ wide piece into one 6″ and one 3 1/2″ inch wide piece.
4. Fold the “feathers” into an accordion and press them firmly together to pleat.
5. Gently spread out the feathers, without flattening the pleats.
6. Using a Dremel fitted with a 3/64″ drill bit or similar, drill a 1/2″ hole in the bottom of the pinecone for the pipe cleaner neck.
7. Holding a glue bottle flush with the hole, squirt in a dab of glue. Insert the tip of a 3″ pipe cleaner: gently push into pinecone.
8. Shape the turkey’s neck and wattle.
9. Wrap a 6″ pipe cleaner around the circumference of the pine cone, as tightly as possible. Under the belly of the turkey, twist the two ends of the pipe cleaners together, then shape into legs.
10. Trim legs as desired. Using a pliers, form 1/8″ feet by making a crook in each pipe cleaner end.
11. Dot a few dots of glue where the 6″ wide feather piece will go. Beginning in the center, place the feathers bottom into the pine cone, being sure to catch some glue. Continue down one side of the feathers, then the other, until completely nestled into the pine cone’s glue.
12. Turn the turkey around and repeat the process for the 3 1/2″ wide tail feathers, with the painted detail facing out.
13. Using a small paintbrush, paint the wattle of the turkey using the poncing technique to fill the voids of the pipe cleaner with red paint. Use black paint for the eyes, and orange for the beak. (I use black nail polish for the tiny eyes and t-shirt paint in an applicator bottle for the beak, which helps make the beak shape.)
14. Once the glue and paint has dried, shape the feathers as desired.
Using a pinecone that is about 1 1/2″ in diameter, the finished turkey will be about 3″ tall.
These little guys look great at Thanksgiving placesettings for kids of all ages. Prefer to outsource? These are available in my etsy shop.
The people at PETA would have no problem with the recent turkey processing underway in my craft quarters. Shown above are are two of last year’s pinecone turkeys supervising this year’s production from a perch on my sewing machine. This step shows lots of painted “turkey feathers” air-drying.
At top is a pair of turkeys, about 3″ tall, from this year’s batch. These are now available in my etsy shop and in-store at Parcel in Montclair, New Jersey.
Today I attended the first in a series of Martha Stewart Living Master Class Series classes at the Martha Show studios in New York City. When I saw the ad in a recent issue of Living, I signed up before you could say Nature-Inspired Crafts for the Holidays.
The class was demo-only, and just like the craft segments on the show. Martha is in Japan today, but everything at MSLO is “so Martha” that her brand is felt throughout anyway. You still come away having learned something, and inspired.
Hannah Milman and Marcie McGoldrick demonstrated various advanced-crafting techniques, including creating custom candle molds from birch logs, how to gild using gold-leaf (and faux gold leaf, which is considerably less expensive than the real deal) and wreath and garland-making techniques. Yes, guilded poultry can be stunning.
The class lasted 45 minutes, and there was a crew there to shoot it, so let’s hope we see parts of this on future episodes of Martha. Hanna and Marcie answered questions from the audience between segments, and gave lots of helpful tips and tricks along the way, such as adding a little acrylic paint to color your glue before glittering something to enhance the overall effect.
Fingers crossed that more of these classes are in the works.
Christmas crafts, please!
