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.

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.

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!

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.)

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!

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?

I loved making the peppermints, which were created by stacking two felt circles,  sewing an “x” across the top, then cutting away four triangles to make the peppermint. I will use embroidery floss to make smaller stripes on them as well.

More candy, in the form of gumdrops and pillow candy, will be added next. There will also be a sprinkling of beads and sequins (the heel and toe already have red ones in place).

Claire was Ariel; Lachie was Super Why. The thought of making their costumes myself crosses my mind each year, before I go ahead and buy something pre-fab. This year I did make custom accessories, however.

This is my version of a Super Duper Computer from the Super Why cartoon. It’s made from corrugated cardboard, tape, paper, and ink. If you (or any resident three-year-olds) are a fan of the show, you might surmise that once a few Superletters get added to the computer, the answer will be “Trick or Treat.”

Below are some Tiara-in-progress shots. Claire wanted to take the Ariel cameo off her costume for the tiara; instead I suggested we grab another princess off a shoebox we had around the house.

I cut out Cinderella’s pic, then used glitter glue in silver and blue to “dam” the image, just like the two-step royal icing procedure.

Once that dried, I “flooded” the image with glue (again, a royal icing technique), then filled it in with loose glitter and let it dry.

I’ve made quite a few tiaras, so I have a feel for how much wire I’ll need for a style. I pulled off just over a foot, then started stringing beads in patterns that are symmetrical from beginning to end so the final piece is also symmetrical in design.

Then I bend up the beaded wire into thirds and attach it with more wire to the ribbon-covered headband I made earlier.

Next I wire the Cinderella cameo in place, along with some wired stars I had around from a tiara that never got finished years back. I also added a big, three-dimensional sequin that looks like a stone.

Lastly I covered the wire on the headband with a little more ribbon.

Ta-daaa!

And here’s what the pumpkins looked like this year. A big cat head, a smaller vampire, and one covered in holes. (My husband did that one–I like that it looks like a dotted mushroom! ) I used a Dremel to start the cat face, but ended up finishing it with my trusty Martha by Mail pumpkin carving kit.

These became mushroom clip ornaments, and were inspired by the German glass mushroom clip ornaments I love, old fashioned “mushroom men,” and by the ornaments Hosanna Houser made on the Martha show last year.

These mushroom folks are from 2″ to 3 1/2″ high, hand-painted, sport red stamen-like noses, and have a tuft of feather greenery tucked in the vintage clip.

This earnest fellow is looking forward to his first Christmas.

Lookee what we made!

Crystal demonstrating the finer points of decorating a box with crepe paper and Dresdens.

The ribbon, trims, and Dresdens we worked with…

…and two genormous tubs of glass glitter. Wow. That much glitter makes me wonder about its street value.

More about the event is also on Crystal Hanehan’s blog.