Friday, December 19, 2014

Restored "Nimble Nicks" for Christmas 2014

       Love "nimble nicks" as much as we do? Here are the latest editions for 2014, fully restored and simply adorable! Read Terms of Use folks.

Nimble Nicks sled down hill at break neck speeds!

Nimble Nick wishes you "A Tip-Top Christmas!"

This holiday greeting by a cute little nimble nick reads:

"In spite of miles,
Storms and obstacles
My kindest wishes
Will be with you on
Christmas Morning"
Have a question about the illustration? Just type it in the comment box and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I only publish content that is closely related to the subject, folks.

Christmas Clipart or Clip Art Pages On This Blog: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

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Monday, December 15, 2014

Print "Three Ships" by Henry Payne for Christmas Letters

      The following pictures by Henry Payne were restored by Kathy Grimm for the purpose of reprinting on Christmas Cards or including a little print with a handwritten letter for a loved one. Visitors should read The Terms of Use before downloading them from here. Use them in your own personal crafts and letters freely but do not redistribute them over the web or profit from them by selling the work in it's original state. (This means burning the jpgs. to CDs or using them to draw traffic to web pages.) Click directly on one of the four options to download the largest files.





Sunday, December 14, 2014

The Bride's Christmas Tree

Above are ornament types often found on the bride's first Christmas tree in Germany.
       In Germany it is customary to give Christmas ornaments to the bride on her wedding day. Below are the original meanings attached to the traditional ornaments that hang upon the couple's first Christmas tree. The ornaments are most frequently made of glass, however, you could give a selection of these Christmas ornaments made from any number of interesting materials. A young girl might even collect each ornament herself over a longer period of time and store them in a hope chest.
      My husband's mother collected his first ornaments, one per year, every year, until he married. Then these ornaments were boxed up and gifted to me at my wedding shower.
  1. Acorn - Resurrection in Christ
  2. Angel - messengers from God
  3. Apple - reminder to avoid temptations
  4. Bell - joyful noise, announcing important news
  5. Birds - bring messages of joy
  6. Bird Nest - money, fortune, physical wealth
  7. Carrot - good luck in the kitchen
  8. Church - spiritual family/home
  9. Devil - He serves St. Nickolas, according to legend, for one day every year (Christmas) as form of punishment because of his disloyalty to God.
  10. Dove - symbol of the Holy Spirit, the third person of The Holy Trinity
  11. Fir Tree - Everlasting life through Christ, because it remains green during winter
  12. Fish - identity in Christ, provision, Peter finds the tax hidden in a fish
  13. Flower Basket - symbolic of hope, it springs eternal
  14. Fruit Basket - abundance of good health, harvest
  15. Grape Cluster - communion with Christ and other believers
  16. Heart - love
  17. House - shelter
  18. Orange - wealth and prosperity, during many centuries to have oranges in winter months was considered a luxury 
  19. Pickle - game, extra gift goes to those who find it on their tree
  20. Pine Cone - wisdom
  21. Rabbit - fertility, rabbits multiply easily
  22. Pink Rose - Virgin Mary
  23. Yellow Rose - Friendship
  24. Walnut - good fortune, also connected with telling fortunes
  25. White Rose - Spiritual Love
  26. Saint Nicholas - generosity and goodwill towards others, The Bishop of Myra was an abolitionist
  27. Ship - passage through trouble or over troubled waters
  28. Star - guiding light, early believers used the night sky to guide them on their journeys, astrologers from the east followed a constellation to find Jesus
  29. Teapot - hospitality, offering tea to strangers has ancient roots
  30. Tulip - A red tulip means eternal love

Ornaments Made from Angel Cross Stitch Patterns

By Prairie School and perfectly lovely addition,
I think, to a Medieval Christmas Tree.

        These little cross stitch angel patterns, created 1993, were based upon Byzantine designs. They were also intended to be produced on black canvas backgrounds. Several years ago my oldest child stitched a couple of these unusual angelic motifs for our family Christmas tree. 
Michael and Gabriel, two archangels
        The Prairie School patterns depict angels in brilliant colors, formally positioned wings and with iconographic portrait features. I've included a sample of Byzantine angels in this post so that you may make your own comparisons.
       During the medieval period senior angels were often clad in every brilliant color, while junior ranks wore white by artists. Early Renaissance painters such as Jan van Eyck and Fra Angelico painted angels with multicolored wings. Depictions of angels came to combine medieval notions of beauty with feminine ideals of grace and beauty, as in da Panicale's 1435 Baptism of Christ.
      The two angels on the right were painted in a 12th Century icon. They are the two archangels, Michael and Gabriel. They wear the loros of the Imperial guards. The loros is one of the most important and distinctive parts of the most formal and ceremonial type of imperial Byzantine costume. It developed out of the trabea triumphalis of the Roman consuls. The loros was a long, narrow and embroidered scarf which was wrapped around the torso and dropped over the left hand. It was embroidered with gold and heavily embellished with gems.
       You can search online to find a wider variety of angels dating from the Medieval Period, 5th century to the 15th, in order to design your own ornaments. Ebay sometimes offers old Prairie School patterns for sale as well.

View and Read About Different Angel Types from The Medieval Period:

"A Mistletoe Maid"


A Mistletoe Maid
by Irving
 
I kissed her--yes, I did--beneath
The mystic mistletoe
When Christmas bells were pealing out
Across the drifted snow.
She was a maiden sweet to see
And just my style to boot,
And so upon her ruby lips
I placed a swift salute.

For she had twined the berried
bough
On chandelier and wall,
And wreathed it all around the door,
And draped it in the hall,
And pinned it to the picture frames,
And hung it on the latch,
And tucked it in her hair, and so
I had to toe the scratch.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

How To Make a Pine Cone Christmas Tree Ornament

Two versions of the same Christmas pine cone craft. The appearance of this particular ornament may be altered by switching out the materials that you use. School children in American often make this craft using pom poms. However, adults can use the same method to craft a very lovely woodland version of the ornament.
Woodland Pine Cone Christmas Tree Version
Above are detailed photos of the woodland pine cone Christmas tree.
 In this version, I used metallic beads to decorate my miniature tree instead
of the traditional pom poms.
 Supply List:
  • pine cones
  • a tiny acorn cap
  • metallic beads for the ornaments
  • hot glue gun 
  • white tacky glue
  • white school glue
  • white cotton batting balls
  • twine for hanging the ornament
  • glitter (optional)
  • pliers and scissors
Step-by-Step Directions:
  1. Glue a fluffy white cotton ball to the top of your pine cone and then turn it upside down so that the pine cone resembles a fir tree.
  2. Add a bit more of the white school glue to the snowy looking surface and spread this out with your finger tips. Let dry. You may decide to add glitter to the cotton for a extra bit of glamor. 
  3. Unravel a couple of white cotton balls and take these apart to form small amounts of fluff for the tips of your pine cone tree. 
  4. Add just a small amount of white glue to each scale and glue white cotton into place.
  5. Now use a hot glue gun to squirt a bit of the hot glue before gently pushing each metallic bead inside the cone. Work with no more than two squirts of glue and two beads at a time; hot glue dries quickly and will harden before you have had time to position the beads into place.
  6. Assemble the pine cone angel by taking apart an additional pine cone with pliers. You may need to cut and trim off the inside edge of each scale before gluing these together again.
  7. I used tacky glue to arrange the tiny scales around the tip of my index finger and then glued a piece of cotton batting to the top and inside portion of the skirt to hold everything in place. I then glued an additional teir (or ruffle)  to the angel's skirt. (pictured below)
  8. Roll a small amount of white cotton batting into the shape of a tiny head and glue this to the top of the cone shaped angel body. 
  9. Glue on a halo made from an acorn cap.
  10. Glue a metallic wire to the inside of the pine cone for hanging.
Here you can see me assemble the skirt of the angel tree topper from pine cone scales and a bit of cotton batting. The head is also made from cotton batting. The halo of my angel is made from an acorn cap.
I have glued two pine cone scales together with tacky glue and a wad of cotton batting. After these wings dry, you can then attach them with glue to the back shoulder blades of your angel. You will need to hold them in position until the glue hardens a bit.
Pine Cone Christmas Tree Version with Red Pom Poms
 
Above, I have included detailed photographs of the red pom pom variation of
this pine cone Christmas tree ornament. This version is also topped off with a
tiny turned wooden Santa figure.
  Supply List:
  • pine cones
  • hot glue gun
  • wooden spool
  • paints and/or decorative paper 
  • twine for hanging the ornament
  • A tiny ornament or star for the "tree topper"
Step-by-Step Directions:
  1. First you will need to decorate your wooden spool. I painted the edges of the one pictured above and then cut a piece of polka dot paper and glued this to the inside of the spool. This step speeds up the process of decorating the ornament.
  2. Next, hot glue a pine cone with the top of the spool. The top of the pine cone should be the end that you glue to the spool base so that the pine cone will suggest the triangular shape of a Christmas pine tree.
  3. Hot glue your pom poms to the tips of the pine cone scales. If you've turned the pine cone upside down and glued it to the spool correctly, there should be a natural "lip" for the pom pom to nestle inside. This is where you will squirt a bit of the hot glue before gently pushing each pom pom inside the cone. Work with no more than two squirts of glue and two pom poms at a time; hot glue dries quickly and will harden before you have had time to position the pom poms.
  4. Now hot glue a tiny "tree topper" to the tip of your pine cone tree if you wish.
More Pine Cone Tree Ornaments:

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Craft Your Own Set of Spun Cotton Icicles

      If you are anything like me, you will be reading this post at 4:30 in the morning while surfing for one last craft to make for your tree. The only difference between us is perhaps that I am looking to teach it and you are looking to receive it. 
       Although I've managed to keep my pocket book under control and I don't spend as much money as most Americans do at Christmas time, I still dream of decorating my home with items that would cost a small fortune in real life. And this dreaming starts about mid June for me, every year, without fail.
       I walk through the rooms of my home and I can't help but fantasize about draping evergreens loaded with tinsel, ice and extravaganza. However, I'm not just thinking about them in my own home, I am also thinking about them in everybody else's and I guess this is what makes me a little strange.
       What is this madness all about? I'm not quite sure but I think it has something to do with my childhood. My father was quite a daydreamer, something like Walter Mitty. He pursued architecture, religion and history throughout his life in that very order. He had the kind of curiosity that only children understand.
       My mother was the opposite, full of common sense and a little restrictive. She had to be as long as he was alive. But, since my father has died, she has become just as romantic as he was. As we age we begin to realize that what others did for us must be repeated in ourselves in order for their memory to remain alive. I think this is why my father cared so much about history. He just wanted to keep repeating the best parts of it so that the people he loved would never be lost or forgotten.
      So here is my next contribution. During the late 1800s through the first World War, cotton batting ornaments were most popular and although you may not be able to purchase a set of these spun cotton icicles realistically, you can handcraft them with just a bit of time and patience.
I handcrafted a set of six cotton batting icicles for my tree.

Supply List:
  • Both white cotton batting balls and a white cotton batting sheet
  • iridescent glitter
  • red holly berries
  • faux pin needles (cut an artificial branch)
  • masking tape
  • wooden skewers
  • newsprint
  • white school glue
  • white tacky glue
  • scissors
  • wire to shape a hooks
Step-by-Step Instructions:
  1.  I purchased wooden skewers for this project from the grocery store and then broke them in half. You may make your own icicles any length that you desire. But, do use a strong stick, pencil or skewer inside the core of your icicles. These will prevent the ornaments from breaking, should these receive a bit of rough handling over time.
  2. Crush newsprint and layer masking tape on top of it to shape your icicle's form.
  3. I used cotton batting wire to shape hooks on top of each icicle for hanging. Glue and tape these firmly in place before you begin wrapping the icicles with cotton.
  4. In this case, I recommend that you wrap the first layer with a sheet of cotton batting and white school glue. Wrap the subsequent layers with unraveled cotton balls.
  5. After you have layered both cotton and glue, ending with a light coating of glue always, let the icicles dry thoroughly in a warm area.
  6. Poke a hole into the surface of your icicle and fill it with tacky white glue and faux berries/pine needles. Let dry.
  7. Unravel white cotton balls and apply glue in a spiral pattern down the length of your icicle. Wrap and twist a last layer of batting to form the pattern demonstrated in the photos below. 
  8. Wipe on a final coating of white school glue and sprinkle a generous amount of iridescent glitter onto the wet surface. Let the icicles dry and then hang them on the tree for an impressive winter display!
Pictured above are the wooden skewers wrapped and ready to be turned into something special.
The first layer of batting is made of a cotton sheet, normally this is used to line blankets and quilts with.
After your icicles dry, poke a holes into their surfaces and paste in faux pine needles and berries.
To add the final touches, wrap and twist cotton batting down the length of each icicle with glue. On the far right you can see that I've also sprinkled glitter onto the surfaces of my icicles.
See More Versions of Spun Cotton Icicles: