Merry Christmas - frohe Weihnachten - yoyeux noël

I wish you a very happy Christmas and some relaxing and merry festive days!

This is the last page in my this years self drawed calendar:

Je vous souhaite un yoxeux noël et quelques jours festives et heureux,
Jane

Winter Villages

Seeing several of my decoration crafting of the last years, it is clear that I like wonky houses! You can see for example my dwarf village or the old livingroom wall deco houses.

When cutting out the wooden stars, I kept a lot of scrap wood pieces: triangles and wonky squares. I saw immediately houses! Lots of them! 

For test I build a little village and added some pin trees the type I used for the Advent decoration and voilà: my winter village!

As the charm of those houses is the asymmetry, it is perfect for kids. I invited some friends of my sons and we had the nicest crafting party!

I prepared the trees and the wood pieces, but the kids did the assembly of the houses and the painting as well as the layout of their little villages.

All very different, but each child loved his or her village and we had a fun afternoon together. It makes me happy to do crafting when the kids are so enthusiastic!

A bientôt,
Jane

Reindeers in the garden

Look who moved-in in our garden this afternoon!

Fun construction of my boys and me!

Bonne soiree et a bientôt,

Jane

Christmas Cards

My this years Christmas cards theme is cold! As it is outside. But here it is more foggy and icy and no snow. 

I made a bunch of them Monday and again stamping is so much fun! Only carving the little tree stamp has been a bit fiddly and I needed three attempts. But now I love the result!

If you want to see other Christmas Cards I made the last years, have a look:

Reindeer 2015

Houses 2014 

Birds 2014

Candles

Maybe that gives you some inspiration for your cards?

A bientôt,
Jane

Playing card holder

My grandma who is 101 years old, loves to play cards and she meets every second week with some other old ladies to play Canasta together. She recently broke her hand and even everything healed well, she is still a bit week with that hand and holding a hand of cards for one afternoon isn't working any more. She told me, that she now puts her cards sorted in little stacks backside up on the table when it isn't her turn, but that sounds a bit laborious to me. So I made her a card holder. Outside fabric and inside cardstock:

The holder is 22cm long. When making it, I thought that is long, but as you can see there is not much space for many cards and everyone who plays Canasta knows that you sometimes have 20 to 30 cards on your hand. So I made a second one.

When not playing you can fold the holder flat, so it is easy to store them away. 

Hopefully my grandma will find them usable when she gets them for Christmas.

A bientôt,
Jane

Transformation art at the wall

Since we moved in (7 years ago) I have been only temporarily satisfied with the living room decoration. For two years I had those deco-houses (look up here) and then disliked them again. Now I have two narrow shelfs to put framed pictures and/or deco objects on them. For now I really like it :-)

(Ah yes: since the houses deco, we also changed the orientation of the sofa and got rid of some furniture)

Already with Christmas decoration, but also permanent pieces like the clock and the two framed pictures. See beside the Advent calendar of my sons.

The newest addition to the wall is a wooden magnetic jigsaw. I bought it on the Christmas market of a very likable lady who had the stand beside me. She runs a web-shop for baby equipment and very nice toys. We have been chatting all day and I bought this chameleon:

Originally it comes with a metallic box and you can do and undo the little magnetic pieces inside. Very clever if you take it for kids on a car ride. But as I wanted it as a picture, the box had been too small and from the distance the dark background reduced the brightness of the colors. So I asked my husband to cut me a metallic board 35x35cm and I painted it white from one side and black from the other. For now we only used the white side and transformed the chameleon into the nicest animals. 

The picture changes every two or three days! Little son seems to have a passion for birds. The last two creation are his.

For now I am happy with my living room style. Let's see how long it last this time!

A bientôt,
Jane

Star addicted

I have a problem: A star-problem! 

Not what you think! I didn't got famous over night! 

I just got addicted to cutting out stars. I don't want to do anything else!

So much fun! My darling bought in summer a very old band-saw. It's heavy and takes a lot of space in the work shop, but it cut's literally everything! I saw my husband working with it, but only now I tried - and yes, now I am addicted. I stop cutting fabrics for cutting wood!

I promised to support the schools Christmas market and therefor I made big stars that are on metal rods and can be planted outside. For decoration in the front yard or in a pot in front of the door for example. 

The first I cut out from nice pine boards that we still had in the basement. They had a clean smooth surface and were easy to paint white and later I and a friend put some golden paint on them too.

Then my friend gave me a plank with a rough surface. I already got splints in my hand when carrying it home. I wasn't delighted by the thought of smoothing the whole surface, when I had the idea to burn the splints of. So I cut out the stars and then I took a blowtorch to burn the surface and sides. It worked great! The splitters where gone and the texture of the wood became very nicely visible. Later we painted only small white stars for decoration in the middle. 

Of course all the big stars left a big amount of scrap wood. I cut out smaller stars. After smoothing, they are very pleasant and soft to touch. I like them best without paint and simple wooden. I sold some of those on the annual private Christmas market and they are around here for decoration too.

My final and biggest star is cut out from a roof beam that another friend of mine had left over from construction of their house. It is 10cm thick, but the saw had no problems cutting. The cut is very straight and clean. 

On this picture you can see also the band saw! (And all the dust it makes)

Have a very lovely second Advent weekend!

A bientôt,
Jane