I love Christmas - part 3 - The wreath

I tizzied up a plain ikea wreath this year. I like the simplicity of it.

I love Christmas - Part 2 - Knitted Nativity

This feat of magnificence was knitted by my mum. I'm a very basic straight scarf knitter and this knittery is waaaay beyond my skills. My mum's crafty expertise is in knitting, crochet and quilting. She's an insane crafter like the rest of us and always has a project on the go. I love the detail in all the characters. She did a great job. My dad got involved in this crafty project and soldered the shepherd's staffs and painted them in the appropriate brown. Nice one mum and dad!!

I love Christmas - part 1 - The Diorama

This is a joint project that I completed with my 7 year old niece. It's a bit wacky spectacky, but she loves it. This is our diorama we whipped up for our amusement this year. Since it's sans snow around here at Christmastime we thought we would bring a Christmas winter wonderland to our new cabinet. I must admit my purchase of new cabinet was based heavily on that little window display area. Although it does have a great sliding bottom storage area as well. It's a 70's number and is actually made in Australia - rare these days! I got quite giddy thinking up all the dioramas I could produce and display throughout the year. I remember, being fascinated, watching lots of American TV shows as a kid and American kids always seemed to be making dioramas for their school projects. I don't remember ever making a diorama for school - wish I had though I would have gone off!!!!

Now, as for the features in our spectacular, spectacular display. The log cabin I constructed out of sticks and cardboard with a bit of fleece and wadding for the roof. I then sprayed the whole thing with fake snow in a can, which was both stinky and weird. I then lit the whole cabin both inside and out using tiny strands of battery operated lights. So incredibly cute. I then constructed an ice lake/ice skating rink out of opaque plastic, tissue paper and blue fabric. I glued all the layers together and then used a hot glue gun and swirled glue all over the plastic so it looks like people have been skating on the ice. The rink is then lit from underneath with icy white, battery operated, LED lights to give a lovely glow. The other little houses, which aren't exactly to scale, but very cute were bought at a junk shop for $15 each and have optic fibre lights inside each. The snowy grounds were made with wadding on the bottom, to give a snowy depth, and with white fleece on top.

Stay Tuned for tomorrow's post on the knitted nativity scene.

Some Cute Things

Here are some new dolls I've been working on. The top one is Barry and the bottom one is his mate Pepe. They're funny and cute and ever so stylish. I had a smile on my face the whole time whilst making these cool dudes. They rock the Amy Butler print on their shirts don't you think?

Now I've got to make a girl to go with these guys because they are such chick magnets and at the moment are chickless. Stay tuned....

Here is a super cute fabric that I bought at Spotlight. Spotlight is usually a dead loss when it comes to cute prints, but voila here is proof that once in a while they have the goods! I love it and it is the most lovely voile and very breezy and cool.

Market Roundup

Here are my Christmas Tree Softie decorations which went gang busters at the market. I did the prawn softies last year for my tree and thought other people might appreciate a bit of prawn action and I wasn't wrong. The Joy to the Thong (flip/flops I think in the UK and US) proved very popular as well. The Joy to the Thong also doubled as my Christmas card this year. Thongs are big time here in Summer so a Christmas tree of thongs, I'm sure, many Aussies would appreciate at this time of year. Me, I can't wear the thong they just don't stay on my feet. They just sort of flop sideways and an unbearable pain develops between my big toes, so I've given up on the thong even though one of my friends has even offered to jimmy up the thong with velcro. Sounds a bit ouchy so I'll leave the thongs to my mates to flip flop around in.

Markets have been stealing my blogtime. I did the Laman Street Art Bazaar, for the first time, which was really great and also did the Olive Tree twilight market. I got to do a bit of shopping and found a fellow novacastrian who is very funny and has some very cool Newcastle souvenir stuff. Check out Trevor's website here. I'd like to thank all my loyal and lovely customers and my fellow carnie peeps. Markets are a hard slog, but when there are such lovely customers and market friends who really support you throughout the year it is all worthwhile. So Merry Christmas guys and I'll see you in the new year with new stuff I'm already cooking up in my weary market brain. Now it's time for Christmas fun.......

Note: Comments have to be moderated at the moment. I've been targeted as a person very interested in escort agencies and viagra, cause you know craft and smut are such a great match, great marketing on their part, I know! Sorry for those people whose comments have been slow to appear. Thanks everyone for all your comments I really appreciate your support and lovely comments.