Simple candy canes

And I do mean simple. As you can see, I started with striped paperclips. The container I bought has many different colors but the red and green ones work best for Christmas. (Although, since my kids don't like peppermint, there are always multiple colors of candy canes on my tree.) I used heavy duty scissors to cut the clips but a wire cutter works as well or better. The big end of the clip can also be cut into canes. It just requires a bit more work to get a smaller hook. I didn't have my regular tools out when I made these.

They look great hanging on a Christmas tree, in a jar, or just lying on the kitchen counter. Have fun!

Meet Santa's Mail Carrier

Santa's mail keeps Rudy the mailman busy this time of year. Between the letters from children and the Christmas cards from all the elves, Rudy's bag gets pretty heavy.

His bag and hat say "NP Mail" (North Pole). His bag is made of fake leather with real leather trim and he's got a handful of mail for Santa's mailbox.

Decorating for the holidays

Kate has decorated the living room of Magnolia Way for Christmas. The little tree is the tip of a 1:1 artificial Christmas tree. I "planted" it in a copper tub. I made all of the ornaments from beads and jewelry wire. The wreath is a mini grapevine wreath wrapped with ribbon and trimmed with bead ornaments. There's also a tiny gingerbread house on the coffee table. That is now in the kitchen and there's a beautiful glass footed bowl full of fruit sitting on the table. My friend, Brenda, made it for me. I need to add some greenery around the base to make it look more festive. I love the simple vintage feel to these Christmas decorations. I think it suits Magnolia Way.

Welcome!

Please help me welcome joypaulcox, my 98th follower! I'm sorry but I don't have any more information. Joy if you have a blog or website please let me know and I will post a link.

Not a mini but...

...cute anyway. Our family has had huge green stockings since my children were little. My husband and son have snowmen on theirs and the girls and I have angels. They were a lot of fun to make. Now my oldest daughter is engaged and I wanted to make a stocking for my almost son-in-law. I didn't think I could match the green so I went with red. I couldn't get to our stockings without taking all of the decorations out (Thursday night's project) so I guesstimated on size. I think I'm pretty close. I also think the future inlaws will benefit from my experience. Doug's is cuter than the other boys' stockings. Hope I don't get in trouble with them!

I bought one yard of red felt. That will make this one and one for the next son-in-law. By the time my son is bringing home a fiance, I'll need more felt but I should have a few years but since he's only 16, lol.

After cutting out and sewing the basic stocking shape, the rest is just cut out and fused on with an iron on adhesive. I used various cotton and cotton blend scraps of fabric. The "fur" on the hat is quilt batting that I glued on after everything else was in place.

There's a new mini after all

I had so much fun with the first small scale rooms in a wreath that I made another one. This one is much better as I learned from the first. I'm giving this one as a gift so I guess it's good that it's better, lol.

No new minis

We had a busy weekend here. My sister came for a visit early Saturday and we celebrated my inlaws 50th wedding anniversary Saturday evening. My father in law is in very poor health so it was a blessing that he was able to celebrate this important day.

Tomorrow my daughters come home from college for Thanksgiving break and we'll be eating and shopping and decorating the house for Christmas. If you don't hear much from me this week, don't worry. It's just a busy family time.

I wish all of my US friends a lovely Thanksgiving!

Playing with scale

Have you seen those round roomboxes meant to put a real sized wreath around? HBS sells them - they have two shallow rooms to display a few pieces of furniture. This year HBS also has a mini version that's already decorated and filled. I decided to try to make one myself. I used the lid to a paper mache hat box. My wallpaper is the inside of a bill envelope. Isn't the scale perfect? The furniture is all made with bits of wood and fabric, sanded, shaped, stained and glued. Upstairs is the bedroom with a double bed and a chest of drawers. I had trouble getting a clear photo (this was it out of 20 pics!) so in this one you can't see the headboard and pillows on the bed...but they are there I promise. The floor in that room is stained wood. Downstairs is the stone fireplace and a navy wingchair. Also the decorated Christmas tree. I snipped the top off a bottle brush tree and decorated it with tiny beads and topped it with a star shaped bead. There are stockings hanging from the mantle and a wreath on the wall behind the chair. The floor in this room has red carpet - a snippet of self adhesive felt. The wreath was made from a small piece of real sized garland that I cut WAY down. It's wrapped with a sparkling red garland and trimmed with a red silk bow. The whole thing is about 1.5 inches in diameter and about 1/2 inch deep. My lid is 6 sided so it was very easy to glue the dividing floor in place into the corners.
This was a surprisingly easy project - from start to finish it took less than an hour to complete.

An addition

Saint Nicholas now has a bag of old fashioned toys to give to all of those good little girls and boys. :0)

A productive day

These are some of the wonderful items I received in a recent Small World nursery swap. I made the basket full of baby toiletries sitting on the table and an afghan not shown. I have such an amazingly talented group of mini friends!

I made this baby girl to go in the cradle I received in the swap. She's anatomically correct...and then I glued a diaper on her, lol. There are even tiny little diaper pins. She's got that blotchy skin color that newborns have, too. She's cuter than what this photo shows. I had a horrible time getting one even this good.

I also made this Victorian Father Christmas today. He's listed in my etsy shop. He has sculpted boots and his coat is lined with gold satin. I love how he turned out. Isn't it great when the idea in your head actually works out the same way?

Santa had some surgery

This is my Santa. I made the original doll 16 years ago. He had a bead head, ugly blue mittens and tiny little boots. Last Christmas I gave him a new head. Last week I gave him some new hands. Today I made him some substantial boots and a new coat with long enough sleeves. I used the same fleece for the fur that I used for the Santa I made for my etsy shop. Oh, and I also strengthened his legs and "bulked" him up a bit. Mrs. Claus will be pleased, lol.

Two more suitcases

I left the black one that I showed you yesterday empty. The gray one in the middle is packed with men's clothing and the teal one is for a woman.

New mini suitcase

This one is sueded black leather with gray interior. There are pockets on each side and a large one in the lid of the case. I'm still trying to decide whether to fill it or sell it as is. I've sold them both ways. The suitcases have been my best seller in the etsy shop. What do you all think? Filled or empty so the purchaser can choose how to fill it.

Welcome!

Please help me welcome Linda. She's a scientist and a miniaturist, too. Stop by Linda's Minis and see what she's been doing. Thank you, Linda!

Not a mini but...

...fun to make, none the less. I had the beads out today to make some light fixture for the little girls' dollhouse and decided to make some earrings, too.The color washed out in the photo but the beads are a deep red. Now I've just got to figure out what I'm wearing to church in the morning so I can wear my new earrings. :-)

Life's a little crazy right now

So hubby, son and I are mostly over the h1n1 creeping crud...but hubby exposed our oldest when he took her to RediMed the day before he got sick. So she's home from college for the week. Poor thing is really sick. This is not fun stuff.

I hope next week to return to a somewhat normal life. I will "see" you then. ;0)

A Christmas cactus for the kitchen

I worked on this last night while watching TV with hubby. A tray on my lap kept everything close and contained. I used Becky Windsor's tutorial in American Miniaturist issue #44. However, as usual, I didn't have everything on hand so was forced to improvise a little. Becky used a handheld oak leaf punch and the little leaves were just the right size. I don't have an oak leaf in that size but I do have one that's the size of a one inch scale oak leaf. So I punched my leaves with that and then took a small set of curved scissors to cut each pair of leaves down to size. I tried to cut the leaves freehand but that didn't work well for me. Having a basic shape to start with made a huge difference. My cactus leaves probably should be a bit smaller but that just wasn't gonna happen last night, lol. My flowers are made from tiny stars punched out of red tissue paper, again not how Becky did it but it worked. A few more stems would have looked nice but I got tired of cutting little leaves and it still looks pretty good. I don't think I'll be making any more of these in the near future but I do like this one. It looks good on top of Mrs. C's cabinets, too.

One of Santa's helpers

This is Alfred Eloysus Elf. His parents wanted to give him a distinguished name. Little did they know he'd end up being called Alf Elf. Alf is also for sale in my etsy shop. He was really fun to make. Adding all the little details was the best part - fancy elf shoes with curled up toes, bright red buttons holding the plaid suspenders in place and the jinglebell on the tip of his stocking cap.

It's been a wonderful day so far. We started the morning with really thick fog. The drive to church was a little scary so I'm glad we don't live far from the church. When we came out, the sun was shining and it was unseasonably warm. Then my hubby took me out for Chinese for lunch. Now I'm comfy in my sweats and watching football. Life just doesn't get much better than that. :0)

I hope all of you are having a wonderful Sunday, too!

A new doll for my shop

I'm beginning to work on stocking up my etsy shop for Christmas. This classic Santa is the start. He's nicely plump, stands on his own and is dressed in a traditional red suit with white fur trim. He turned out so well that I may have to make yet another set of adjustments to my Santa doll, lol.

Today's project is to assemble and dress the elf I sculpted last night.

Christmas is just around the corner....

...so I've been upgrading some things in the Claus's house. I originally had a handpainted round table and two chairs in the kitchen at the open end.That just didn't give Mrs. Claus enough room to work and move in her kitchen so I made the island with a butcher block top and two stools to replace the table and chairs. It's much more efficient now.

Santa has been through several surgeries, lol. I first made him nearly 20 years ago and he had a bead head, with blue mittens and black boots made from polymer clay. Last year I gave him a new polymer clay head and new green mittens. Those mittens were bugging me since he's actually working inside so I made him some hands. You can see him here discussing the Christmas Eve delivery plans with his head elf, Pete.

And, finally, here's a better photo of Dasher after his reincarnation from gold glitter to furry reindeer.That's Red behind him. Red is the elf in charge of the reindeer.

Christmas is my favorite holiday so I have several Christmas themed projects. Besides Santa's house, I have the house I live in now as it was when my children were very little. It's always decorated for Christmas. I also have a small roombox. Next month I will show more photos of Santa's house and the other Christmas projects, too.

Baby Landon and his bed

I apologize for the quality of the photos. I'm still having to use my cellphone camera. Last Christmas I decorated a dollhouse for a friend's two young daughters. They were recently joined by a baby brother, Landon. I found a little rubber doll to use. I just had to dress him. The bassinet is made from a small plastic basket glued to pizza saver legs. I will deliver the doll and bed on Sunday (if I am well enough).

I miss my camera!

I had to use my cell phone to take this picture but this is the "reindeer" I refinished. He started out covered completely in gold glitter and he cost $1 at the dollar store. I painted and flocked him and he turned out fairly well. Red, the elf, is taking care of him. They are outside Santa's house. There will be more photos of that next month.

Sorry I've not been posting regularly

My husband has been ill this weekend. He's heading to the doctor now. We're suspicious of H1N1 as some of his coworkers' children have had it. I'm not feeling too peppy myself. I guess we'll see what the doctor says about hubby.

The minis I have been working on are mostly for swaps so I can't even share pictures. Plus my camera is acting up.

All in all, it's been a bit frustrating around here but I hope to be back soon.