On The Remainder of This Year’s Christmas Crafting

Aside from the pom-pom ornaments and the pixie ornaments in the last two posts, I managed to jam a few other craft projects in before Christmas.

This year I made two Putz houses from the patterns on Retro Renovation to add to the three I made a few years ago and the one that belonged to my grandma (which didn’t make it out this year). Both were scaled down by half, since I wouldn’t know how to store larger ones.

I’m not entirely sure what I think of my watermelon colored house, it just kind of happened in an unplanned sort of way. It’s not really a snowy weather looking house, which I didn’t decide upon until after I attached the house to the already painted base and I think I’m just going to leave it this way until next year. The cottage, on the other hand, I am perfectly delighted with!

Then there’s Fredrick the tipsy, red pin-nosed reindeer who has some very shiny antlers. Frederick, in case you didn’t know, is the 5 1/2 inch counterpart to Rudolph and he's quite the legend among doll house people and mice.

 

He does suffer from a slight alcohol dependency, which causes him to tip over frequently (well, at least until he was glued down), but he’s slowly learning to like eggnog instead.

The instructions for making him and the sleigh came from a 1958 New Ideas for Christmas magazine I found at a thrift store (after waiting a year for them to put out holiday items again because I didn’t buy it the first time I saw it).

I will readily dispute the claim "it takes only an hour to make."

I altered it by painting the corks instead of using gummed paper (not something I have handy), using seed beads for the eyes, and forgoing the ears. Sparkly paper was used to cover the sleigh and the presents are pieces of cardboard wrapped in wide curling ribbon. I also skipped making Santa because I ran out of the right size corks. I really love how it turned out and am sorely tempted to leave it out all year. 

And that sums up my Christmas crafting, minus a few presents. ♥