Paper Clay Santa!

Several years back, I was experimenting with paper clay and created several snowflake Christmas ornaments. Some I gave a coat of varnish to as a finishing touch and others I didn't. With the final bit of clay left in the package, I hand modeled a Santa face.

For several years, it sat untouched in the box with the snowflakes as one of those ideas that never resulted in a finished project. But, while on a roll with making some Christmas ornaments, I took a new look at it. I got out the water color kit and gave it some color. Then, I gave it a coat of Mod Podge for some stability as I found the paper clay snowflakes that didn't get a final varnish did start to crumble after a few years. Also, water color does need something to make the colorfast. 

As the eye sockets were just indentations, I did build them up into eyes with a bit of paper-mache' technique. Then, with the help of a felt tip marker to do some delicate details it was done. One last coat of Mod Podge finished it off. 

I thought it was cute, but the grand-kids vetoed it from the Christmas tree last Christmas. Oh well, maybe they'll like it this year or next. Maybe it was too much of a reminder that Santa's eyes were on them!

Wood Cut Decoupage Christmas Ornaments

Decoupage Wood Slices make great Christmas tree ornaments!

Last Christmas I decided to organize a handmade Christmas ornament exchange with a group. Before the exchange deadline came due, I tried out several ideas and finally found the one I liked the best. It was decoupage wood slices! They were so fun to make that I made oodles of them -- enough for the exchange, enough for some special gifts to friends, and more than enough for my own Christmas tree. They won't break and were ever so cute so I wanted to make sure that my grand-kids would have plenty to put on the tree wherever they liked. 

 I found wood slices at a local 100 Yen Shop (like a dollar store). I tried to get the ones that had interesting bark -- some appeared to be birch, some had really curly bark, and all had a nice natural look. Others were round and had a light exterior wood and a dark inner core. None of them were pre-drilled with a hole for ribbon or string, though. They were a bit too small for that anyway. I was able to find several cut at an angle, which also gave them a nice look and made me nostalgic for the bigger wood sliced decoupaged pictures that people like my grandma had hanging on their walls when I was a kid.

The decoupage method is fairly easy once you get the hang of it. For most of them, I sized a print according to the size of the wood slice and color copied it. As there are no art supplies shops near me, I used hair spray as a fixative so the colors wouldn't run once I started to decoupage. For a few of them, I used some old wildlife stamps that my mother had affixed to a box she sent me many decades ago. The stamps were starting to peel off and I was planning to get rid of the box anyway so I rescued the stamps and used them in this project.

I found that gently tearing the paper, rather than cutting, gave the most natural edges to the print and made it blend in nicely with the wood slice.

Next, on to decoupaging. Back when I first learned how to decoupage in the 1970s, I used varnish. But, a couple of years back I learned about Mod Podge. It is easy to work with. So, I Mod Podged the print onto the wood slice. Waited for it to dry before moving on to adding the layers of Mod Podge. Depending on how quickly things dry and how many and heavy the coats are layered on, that step might finish in a day or two or maybe even several days will be needed.

Without a pre-drilled hole to hang the wood slices from, I found that ribbon tied and glued to the back worked fine. Finally, I used washi paper to cover over the backside with the exposed ribbon and Mod Podged that too.

My biggest challenge was that my local 100 Yen Shop kept running out of wood slices and ribbons that were suitable for the project!

Christmas decorations -- Making a dangerous ornament safe

I bought something second-hand at an online auction last winter and only some months later, when I was breaking down boxes for recycling, did I discover that the seller had included a couple of freebies in the package. What cute little Christmas angels, I first thought. My second thought was, that those sharp metal upturned arms and wings could poke an eye out!!! Ah, now I understand the freebie as the first owner probably had the same thoughts after purchase and wanted those out of their house and away from their own kids!

So, here is what I did with them, I took the outer parts of ribbon rolls and with a piece of reddish colored mesh, glued them together to form a stiff sturdy base. Then, I Mod Podged both sides for added thickness. Once dried, I glued each ornament onto  the base. 

Behold a red glow through the center when the light shines and the arms and wings are no longer lethal weapons!

Christmas decorations -- Updating a tacky plastic onion shape

I know, I know, Christmas is months and months away so I should be thinking about other things. But, that's just it, when the season rolls around again, I probably will get so busy yet again . Then, once again, I will have trouble finding the time to take care of jobs like sorting through my boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations and finding those that need some time spent on making repairs. It's just so much more fun to get the tree up and immediately start to decorate it! So, while digging out the summer fans in the storage closet, and before it gets too sweltering hot, I also decided to pull out the boxes of Christmas decorations and do a bit of re-organizing. I was aiming for finding the ones that need a bit of work on them and thinning out those that don't quite match the woodsy-foresty theme I'll be going for next Christmas, especially if they were being used more for their child-friendly unbreakable aspects than anything else. By next Christmas, at nearly 6 and 9, the grand-kids will hopefully be old enough to enjoy a few more fragile things on the tree without too great of a temptation... Hmm.... We'll see how that goes, but that's the hope for now.

Now that the Christmas tree no longer needs to be quarantined off into the coldest upstairs room, away from toddlers, last year I packed away all of the snowmen and most of the snowflake ornaments that I'd been collecting and using for a few decades. Our backyard Japanese maple trees have matured to the point that they are the focus of attention when the leaves turn and the Christmas tree will now return to the living room to sit in front of the outdoor view! But, our climate is such that from Thanksgiving up to Christmas, our autumn leaves are at their peak and with the stunning reds and orange hues, snowmen just seemed silly. So, I invested in some new decorations and created many more that should be unbreakable and embrace what's actually happening in our local climate during the holiday season. For starters, I bought a new tree topper. It's a Gisela Graham creation and just is so delicate and charming! It looks perfect with the outdoors scenery.

Anyway, in the process of re-organizing, I came across this 3-pack of plastic onion-shaped bulbs. Festive holiday colors, right? Ah, but the "gold" was just so brassy and CHEAP looking up close. It clashed with everything hanging around it. In places, the paint was scratched and chipping off too. So, I did an experiment and gave them a watercolor paint job of orange-yellow; then a layer of Mod Podge; next a layer of varnish which dried a bit sticky; so finally another layer of matte Mod Podge. I tried out a new top to the ornaments with shabby red ribbon but ended up picking it off later after it had dried. The look of these 3 ornaments is softer, with a nod toward autumn, and hopefully it will work with the other things on the tree when the season rolls around again.

One with the first coat of orangy-yellow watercolor and one as it originally was.



Finally, dried and ready for repacking until Christmas!