Christmas Nostalgia and a little Brightening of Canned Ham

I have no art to show for myself (I'm not sure I should be considering this an art blog anymore!) but I wanted to share a couple of images in keeping with the Christmas season, and a few canned ham progress pics.   The Santa and Reindeer above in the window of my house is a new, very old find, that I was really excited about.  I'm guessing it's from the 30's or 40's, and came in it's original box with it's crumbling, yellowed instructions.  It's meant to be on a lawn, but there was no way we were risking it out there, so my husband had the idea of hanging it in the window and creating "clouds" to cover the plastic wedges that are supposed to go into the lawn.  I just love it.

The Santa above was a recent gift from a friend - she had been in a thrift store and the owner had acquired a box she was disappointed to find was just full of "old Christmas things" and was selling them for next to nothing - my friend paid $1 for this cutie!

 As far as the trailer, we've been working on it weather permitting - so not much.  It seems the rain has been waiting for weekends lately - normally I'd love nothing more than a rainy weekend, but now it's just frustrating!  I've been getting some painting done though, all that wood is slowly disappearing and it's starting to look lighter and brighter in there. 

 The blue below is the tarp covering our still missing front window.

      I want to wish all of my blog friends a wonderful holiday season - I'm sure it's flying by for you as it is for me, so slow down when you can and enjoy it while it lasts!!

What I have to show for myself

Christmas decorating - that's the extent of what I have to show for myself. My studio looks like a bomb went off with all my overflow Christmas wrapping, gifts and Christmas art stash that I got out and spread all over my art table and have done nothing with. So, as a few friends have asked to see pictures, I thought I'd post some here since this is where any creative energy I've had time for has gone to lately.

I apologize right now for the quality of some of these photos - indoor photography is definitely not a strength of mine!

My Nutcracker tree

My Christmas village - it's pretty much hit it's critical mass as far as room for anything else - probably for the best!

Reindeer and vintage Christmas ornaments theme going on here...

I love this old seed spreader, it used to belong to someone very special to me who is very missed, and I love having it to remind me of him.

I'm very lucky to have the wonderful old red lantern below from him as well

I received these old Santa mugs for Christmas last year, so I just had to create a little hot cocoa tray with them.  It just makes me happy to look at it, and my husband is making good use out of it as well.

My rooster dressed up in a hat and scarf meant for a wine bottle.

The mantel in my bedroom

I hope you all are having a wonderful and sane Holiday season!

Final Christmas Creations

I took some final pictures yesterday before everything got packed away for this weekend's show.  It felt good to just decide that I'm done! Although I do still need to decide what non-Christmas regular art I'm bringing - since I have limited room I'm going to have to pick and choose.

This is a box I just love that ornaments came in, and I decided to turn it into a little shadow box with a scene in it.

Little stockings from an old quilt, with little vintage decorations- they're only 3-4" tall.

A couple more little hand strainer Christmas scenes.

Trees on little tiny pastry molds, these also are only about 3" tall.

I just love this doll, not something I'm normally drawn to, but I saw her in an antique store, in a stained pathetic little nightie that was safety pinned on her to make it fit, and I just couldn't resist her.  Her little old face is so worn, and I can just imagine how much she was loved and played with.  So I made her this little dress, and attached a fancy old button, and even made her a party hat. She's feeling like a new girl!

Salmon love, or lack thereof

I thought I'd share something different for a change, since I actually remembered to take my camera with me when we went to visit these salmon spawning grounds during the salmon run recently in my hometown.  Millions were spent recently on this area from what I hear, and there's a beautiful overlook created with benches and picnic tables and there are trails along the river and paths down to the water, it's really lovely. I don't feel like these pictures capture the scale of it.  Looking down into the water, where there wasn't too much glare I could see lots of huge salmon all doing their business, which as it turns out is not real romantic and does not involve any bodily contact.  No wonder they have such an ill-tempered look about them!

The life cycle of a salmon, done in lovely tile.

And what would a post be from me lately without some Christmas items - at least we're getting closer to the actual Christmas season so it's not quite so jarring.  Only a week and a half til my holiday art show, and I've been busy busy.  So busy in fact that I got industrious and packed most of what I've made into boxes, and then realized I hadn't taken pictures of quite of few pieces, but oh well.  Here's a few that weren't packed yet since they weren't done.

I've made several of these tiny scenes in old hand strainers, I'm quite fond of them.

Vintage bottle brush tree that I added old mercury glass beads to and attached to the top of an old jelly jar.

This is an old wooden file drawer that I used to create this scene. The half-tree is very old and fragile, so hopefully will be safe in the box.  The music in the back is an original of Winter Wonderland that was my Grandfather's from his large boyhood collection of sheet music.

Catching Up

I'm way behind in posting my Christmas projects, I've been out of town every weekend and most of last week due to a family issue, but here goes.  These are all just pieces for the upcoming Holiday show I'm going to be participating in. I've been buckling down evenings after work, but I always enjoy them once I get started.

This first one my husband made, it's a salvaged snowman robot, with an old Christmas record in his bottom circle - that was an exciting find.

 This one is a little scene in a cigar box, this one just makes me happy to look at. I decorated the outside too, below.

These are some bigger trees I made with a cardboard base then covered with pieces cut from a very old quilt.  Then I sewed on some old lace and stitched in red embroidery thread.

I found a couple of tiny little file drawers recently and made this little Christmas scene in one of them. I love these old Christmas candles.

These are cone ornaments made with a couple of Dutch cookie molds I found a while back, I so wish I'd bought more at the time!

This is an old jelly jar with a wonderful tin lid. It was really hard for me to cover it up, but I did it anyway.  You can pull the little Santa much farther up that little coiled wire you see, then he kind of bounces down to the bottom, I was so excited when I found him!

Histoire Naturelle

My Dad gave me this section of a bird's nest that he found, and I've had it quite a while, looking at it occasionally hoping for inspiration. Then I attached it to some chicken wire to stabilize it and it stayed like that for a while. Then I attached it to this burlap covered canvas using lots of plaster over the chicken wire, and it's been staring at me, all that white plaster, for about a month now and I finally decided over the weekend to bite the bullet and do something with it. It feels so good to finally have it completed! The plaster is covered in a couple of layers of encaustic wax.



This piece, and the one below it, are made from the top and bottom of a gift box. I just played and had fun with these, this one below is covered in lots of plaster as well.

Now more Christmas goodies for the upcoming show I'm doing. This gift box had an inner section with the square cut out, so I glued a vintage Christmas picture at the bottom of the box, and covered the actual hole with a piece of acetate stamped with a small Christmas image.  I should have taken a picture of the side which I decorated also, it's about 1 1/2" deep.

These ornaments are little tiny cages with little trees in them using bottle caps for bottoms - I saw something similar on the cover of one of the Somerset magazines, and created my own version. I think they look like a tray of bright candies or something, I just love them, not sure I'll be willing to sell them!

*** I'm adding this to my original post as I've had some questions about how to make these little cages and thought I'd share a few tips about how I made mine. I used 3 pieces of pretty thick wire for the cages, and the 2nd piece needs to be a little longer than the 1st, and the 3rd a little longer than the 2nd.  Then I wrapped them in paper tape and just bent them and inserted them into the bottle caps which I had filled with modeling paste into which I had already put the little tree (they sell plastic tubs of "snow" in craft stores that you can use and are probably cheaper, but I didn't have any).  It takes a little fiddling, but once you're happy let the paste dry, then I wrapped a piece of wire around the top and attached a vintage mercury glass bead making sure to leave a little loop at the top. I also glued a little round piece of Christmasy paper to the bottom and spread a little stickles glitter over the dry "snow".

Another tip is that if you don't want all your little trees green, you can put them in bleach and they'll turn white, then you can use some ink or dye in water and color them any color you want.

An Abrupt Change in Focus

First, I do have one picture to post from a couple of weeks ago when I was still working on detailed flower drawings -  I do find these very therapeutic.

And just because, here's a pic of my handsome boys being so good and staying on the deck as they were told even though someone was walking by with dogs. 

Now on to my sudden change in focus - I've decided to have a booth at a Holiday vintage antique and art show coming up towards the end of November.  I have plenty of vintage antique goodies and creations, and plenty of art, but not enough Christmas items, so I've pulled out my Christmas stash and have called forth my inner crafter.  In spite of the strangeness of working on Christmas items in September, I've really been having fun.  Below are some of the finished items I've made, I've had multiple projects going on at once, and managed to finish these ones over the weekend.

I used a couple of precious old Christmas candles that I've been hoarding for these two, the round metal rings are from an old flour sifter I took apart.  I did find a tiny little drum last night that I'm going to add to the little soldier (it was a very exciting find!)

This is an old cigar box that I created a little Christmas scene in.  It's hard to see the tiny little reindeer in front in this picture, but it's my favorite part, he's very old.  The entire outside of the box is decorated as well ( I don't think I'll be doing more of these to sell - WAY too labor intensive.)

These little trees are made from a piece of old ceiling tile, cardboard, and various vintage goodies for their base.

This one is my favorite - I know you don't see angel butterflies every day, but that's just what she turned out to be.  Every single part of her is old except for the red glass glitter.  Her head I've had for several years - I planned to print an image and glue onto cardstock for her head, but once I had the idea to use this I couldn't go back.  I have a very old hymn book, and I opened it to see if there was any Christmas music in it and opened it first thing to Hark the Herald Angels Sing, so I pulled that page right out.  ( I should have scanned it first before I cut it into butterfly wings, now that I think about it...)