Merry Christmas to All!

Our little family is having a superb Christmas with my darling little brother and his beautiful wife who are visiting us from London. Aren't we lucky. We had a sweet family Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve last night, complete with real mince pies and Christmas pudding alight with brandy! The highlight for the kids was being able to choose one gift from under the tree to open. Kitty chose her smallest and Teddy chose his biggest! Funny that.

Today, we travel down the coast to have a huge Christmas lunch with our wonderful friends. We miss, like mad, our loved-ones who are so far away... but we are happy and grateful for what we have.

Here are a few photos of my favorite ornaments decorating our tree this year.

Happy Christmas, Happy Christmas!
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Handmade Christmas Gifts : God's Eyes

I know I am not alone in thinking that handmade gifts are by far the best. All gifts are nice when they are given with love, of course, but to be honest, I'd rather receive a roughly sewn 'kitchen towel' with a red potato stamped heart on it (clearly made by a 7 year old) than a perfect store bought one. I'd rather get a mismatched wooden beaded necklace (clearly made by a 4 year old) than a diamond encrusted one... really, I would!

So, with our tight budget this year, we have endeavored to make all of our Christmas gifts.

The ones we have been working on today are God's Eyes. They are made from sticks picked up in the garden and yarn. God's Eyes are a craft from the Huichol tribe of Mexico. We think they are just beautiful with their wonderful color and rich texture.

To make them, find two sticks the same length.

Tie them together with yarn to form a cross.

Tie your first yarn color to the stick close to the center of the cross. Loop it over a stick, pull to the next stick and loop over it in the same direction as the first loop... pull to the next stick and loop the same way again.

You will see a wonderful pattern start to develop.

When you feel like it's time to change the color of your yarn, cut the one you have been using and tie the end to the beginning of your new color. Continue looping as before. You can stick to two matching colors, or add as many as you like.

When you come to the tops of the sticks, cut your yarn leaving a length for a hanging loop. Tie it onto the stick and your God's Eye is ready to hang.

We have a few lovely God's Eyes as ornaments on our tree.

But these two are going to my brother and sister in law. We chose colors that we knew would compliment their home and there's nothing like a little handmade goodness to bring magic to any space.

Happy Christmas crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Folded Paper Christmas Origami Stars

We spent the first day of our Christmas holidays making and hanging our folded paper Christmas origami stars. I love this Waldorf craftThis year we used the Waldorf watercolor paintings that Kitty brought home from school. They are a gorgeous mix of warm colors... yellows, oranges and reds. Perfect for Christmas.

 And, we made a huge one to hang on or front door.

Although these stars look hard to make, they are amazingly easy. Both Kitty and Teddy loved making them. Kitty can make them all on her own but Teddy needs help getting the folds just right. Here is a link to a previous tutorial on how to make folded paper Christmas origami stars with step by step directions.

Happy Christmas crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Handmade Christmas Ornaments :: Dried Oranges

The kids and I are loving making Christmas ornaments this year from simple everyday things. Today, pretty ornaments made from dried orange slices.

When we dried our apples to make these ornaments, we also dried some gorgeously orange orange slices too.

We hung them outside to dry for a few days.

Our Southern California winter is great for drying fruit as it's cool and dry and we've had a fair share of Santa Anna's to help us along. But, if your climate is a little moist to dry fruit outdoors, a cool dry spot in your house will work just as well.

When they were nice and dry, we squeezed a little glue around the white rind of the orange.

And then sprinkled a little of our vintage glitter onto the glue...

Tied a little festive Christmas ribbon onto our dried and glittered oranges and marveled at what a pretty ornament something as simple as a slice of orange can make.

Now, we just have to stop the baby bunny from trying to eat all of our edible ornaments!

Happy Christmas Crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

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How to make Playdough Christmas Ornaments

On the day before Thanksgiving, when I had so much to get done for our massive FEAST  and my children desperately wanted to play with me too, we brought out the beloved playdough recipe. Together, we made such lovely colored playdough and then they played with it for hours and hours, making all sorts of fun little goodies. You can see our recipe and the cute little guys we made in this post here.

Yesterday, we used a little of this playdough (which we store for ages in the fridge) to make some pretty little Christmas Ornaments.

We rolled each color out flat with a rolling pin.

Then we cut out Christmassy shapes using my Christmas cookie cutters.

Poked a hole in the top of each using a skewer and sprinkled them with glitter.

We used my special vintage glitter that I found at an Estate Sale a while ago... can you see the store price sticker that says that a bottle of glitter costs 19c! Those were the days.

Teddy made a Christmas Tree.

We popped them onto wax paper and then into the oven for an hour at a low temperature of 250 F.

When they came out of the over, we let them cool and then tied a little Christmassy ribbon to hang them with, They are waiting to decorate our Christmas tree :-)

We love their colors and that the glitter sparkles in the winter sun.

 Just a reminder that Fairyfolk is having a Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale... 10% off everything. Enter the code BLACKFRIDAY11 in the coupon box at Etsy checkout and Etsy will compute your discount for you.

Happy Christmas crafting.
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Glittered, Wax Dipped, Pinecone Christmas Ornaments

With Christmas coming, our crafting has gone into overdrive. We love finding goodies from nature and turning them into handmade Christmas gifts and ornaments.

Four of our very favorite things all in one craft... beeswax, pine cones, glitter and Christmas. This weekend we made some wax-dipped and glittered pine cones to keep for our Christmas tree. Are they not the cutest little pine cones you've seen yet!

So, what we needed to make these little beauties is...

* Beeswax
* Pinecones
*Giltter
* Thread (for hanging your pine cones)
* A Glue Gun

In this post from last year, when we made beeswax leaf ornaments to celebrate Autumn, you can read about how to safely melt beeswax in a homemade bain-marie. As you will see, there's nothing to it.

But, as we work with beeswax often, I have dedicated a small crock-pot (found for next to nothing at a garage sale) especially for melting our beeswax. I don't think you could find an easier way to melt your beeswax... just break it up into small bits, pop it into the crock and set on medium to high heat and wait for your wax to melt. We put down an old drop-sheet to work on so that a few drips of wax won't worry us.

While the beeswax is melting, we used our glue gun to glue hanging thread loops onto the tops of our pine cones.

When the wax was melted, the fun dipping began. Holding then hanging loop we had just stuck onto our pine cones, Teddy and Kitty dipped their pine cones into the hot wax.

In and out, in and out, until we had a few layers of golden wax on our pine cone. We didn't let the pine cones rest in the hot wax for very long as this melts the layer from the previous dipping.

It's wonderful to watch the wax drips dry.

After the last dipping, when the wax is still warm on the pine cone, we set it in a container and sprinkle it with glitter. The glitter sinks into the warm wax and sticks fast.

Oh, isn't glitter glorious!

Green, pink and white for us this year.

Sparkly prettiness from our resident pine tree.

Here are some variations on this craft from previous years...
wax dipped pine cones

pine cone Christmas ornaments

Happy Christmas crafting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

How to Make a Pine Cone Garland

We had a cold front come to visit from Alaska this weekend. She shed her white cloak of snow all over our mountains and her frozen breath still sits heavy in our Southern Californian air. It's so cold we've had to turn on our central heating in our home which is a drastic step for me, who dreads those first central heating days with their funky, dusty, smell and their drying, itching, air.

So, the long and short of it all, is that Winter has arrived to our sunny part of the world and we can at last lose ourselves in her awesome crafts.

Time for the pine cone garland to go up!

Here is our version.

Collect a basket of pine cones. Find some festive ribbon, some eye hooks and your drill.

Drill little holes just the right size for your eye hooks into the tops of your pine cones.

Twist in the eye hooks.

Each pine cone gets an eye hook.

String your pine cones evenly along the festive ribbon, knotting the eye hooks in place as you thread and, Voila! Suddenly your home will start to look a lot like Winter!

Pretty and pretty easy!
Blessings and magic,
Donni