Monday, December 9, 2013

The Queen and King of Hearts Candy Cone

The raised parts of the candy cones are made using Sculpey and candy molds.

       In order to craft your own candy cone creation, you will need some very basic supplies. I have listed these below but, remember, that your candy cone creation will not be exactly like this one. The molds, design and additional decorative elements will give your cone it's own unique appearance.
  • A candy cone form, this may be either purchased or made by hand. If you are planning to layer molded clay parts onto the form as I have done in the example below, I recommend that you purchase a very sturdy cone.
  • Paper mâché pulp, like CelluClay to shape in a thin layer around the pasted objects. This reinforces the cone and also gives it's surface a texture like snow.
  • Paperclay or Sculpey for the making of decorative 3D applied figures - If you use Sculpey it must be oven baked while draped on top of the cone. This will ensure that it has the subtle curvature necessary in order to be glued to the cone's rounded shape. If you are unsure of how to accomplish this, it takes a bit of skill, only use the paperclay. Paperclay may be left for hours on the cone while it dries into the correct shape. You may use colored clay or choose to paint the clay later.
  • A variety of small half molds. For my particular candy cone project, I chose to mold the King and Queen of Hearts characters from molds produced for Hearth Song. These molds were originally produced for a bee's wax ornament kit produced in 1990 something. I purchased the kit for my oldest child and used it for this purpose many years ago. The molds were so cute that I decided to make something more elaborate with them for my younger daughter.
  • Tinsel to line the interior of the cone
  • Beads and wire to craft the fancy handle
  • White glue to adhere the decorative clay pieces to the surface of the cone.
  • A kind of enamel or acrylic varnish to finish the candy cone's surface 
  • Acrylic paints to color the surface of your cone as you wish
Process:
  1. To begin this process, choose small molded elements that relate to a specific design theme. These may be purchased in a local hobby store or be handmade by pressing a variety of small objects into Sculpey clay that are then carefully removed to leave a three dimensional impression. Bake the clay half mold in the oven as directed. Cool. You may press and unmold a variety of paperclay objects from this Sculpey press mold for future use in the candy cone project.
  2. Because you will be gluing these small molded objects to a cylindrical cone, you will need to make sure that they dry hard with a slight curvature. I dry my molded element directly on top of the surface of the cone along with a generous amount of white glue, while the clay piece is still yet pliable. Neither paperclay or Sculpey shrink enough during the drying or baking process for me to worry about them not shaping themselves properly to the finished surface. If I where using a high fire clay, I might need to worry about this process a bit and make allowances for it. However, with these two products, the fear is unnecessary.
  3. Sometimes the small molded pieces pop off of the cone during drying or baking. Do not trouble yourself over this, just apply more glue to the surface and reattach the element.
  4. Mix together a small amount of CelluClay as directed and apply this around your molded pieces to fill in the gaps on your cone. Let the entire piece dry. Depending upon the time of year, this could take one night or a week. If you are mass producing candy cones to sell in a little shop, this is the point in the project in which you may wish to set aside the cones until you have time to finish them at a later stage. I often do this part of my crafting in the early summer for a couple of weeks. Then I store the cones for painting later. This is because the summer heat helps to dry the CelluClay harder, faster, and also prevents mold from growing on the surface.
  5. Before painting the cone, take a sharp object and punch a whole at the top of the cone on either of it's sides for the handle. 
  6. Add an assortment of beads to a wire and twist this in place through the holes to shape a handle. Make sure their are no sharp ends left that may cause injury. 
  7. Using white glue, adhere a generous amount of tinsel to the interior of the cone or you may choose to simple paint it and add tissue before putting small gifts/candy inside of it.
  8. Paint the surface design of your cone to compliment a design and or color palette of your own choice.
  9. Varnish the outside surface with enamel or acrylic sealer in order to ensure the candy cone's life long use.
  10. Remember to always wrap the candies you give into the cone. I hang the same candy cones on my Christmas tree every year and fill these with all kinds of special sweets.
Candy Cone Forms and Templates:

The hanger for this candy cone is beaded with seed beads, bugle beads, pearl beads etc...

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Sunday, December 8, 2013

How To Organize Christmas Parties

Organize a wintery sleigh ride.
       A house party at Christmas affords the young people of the family a chance to be entertained and cheery for a weekend or more. The charm of a house party is in the bringing together of congenial guests who spend several days with their hosts. When the girls or boys return from college or boarding school for the holidays they often bring with them as guests classmates whose homes are too remote to make it worth whole for them to take a long and expensive journey for the recess. The girl and the boy who hail from the west and attend an eastern school of learning, may be forced to spend a homesick holiday if no comrade tenders an invitation to join a family group.
       Outdoor sports, skating, coasting, tobogganing and sleigh riding are the pastimes of the country, while the city offers sight-seeing, music and the other diversions. Storytelling around a bonfire in Southern states is sure to be a favorite feature of the festivity and ice skating parties are certainly typical of those folks who live up North. Daily excursions such as these are thankfully hosted and organized by others: all you really need to think about is how and when to provide transportation. However, hosting house parties will take a bit of personal planning in advance.
       The long evenings at home, the little parties invited to meet the visitors, and the whole merry and swiftly passing time make a Christmas house-party one of the gala seasons of the year. The housekeeper finds that her provision for the table must be ample. Her pies and cakes disappear like magic, for young people are noted for good appetites. I will links to ideas and helpful ways to organize these home parties below.
       Tableaux, charades and conundrums are among the amusements appropriate to such a parties and I keep an updated listing of ideas for these entertainments here. 

Traditional Outdoor Christmas Parties:
Traditional Christmas Ideas for A House Party:
"GHRI Food Director Susan Westmoreland shares her favorite cookie recipes and shows you how to host a cookie swap."
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Saturday, December 7, 2013

Decoupage Vintage Christmas Postcards

Our relations also frequent their local craft fairs with handmade ornaments to sell. Christmas craft fairs in St. Louis are an age old tradition among German immigrant descendants. These craft fairs are less about profits than they are about community Christmas spirit. Most folks just drink coffee, eat donuts, talk to old friends and neighbors while they browse the latest crafts. I think that if you talked long enough to the participants, you would discover that more money is spent preparing for these fairs than is ever made from selling the wares! The profits are in the memories and friendships.
       Decoupage (or découpage) is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf and so on. Commonly an object like a small box or an item of furniture is covered by cutouts from magazines or from purpose-manufactured papers. Each layer is sealed with varnishes (often multiple coats) until the "stuck on" appearance disappears and the result looks like painting or inlay work. Although the traditional technique used 30 to 40 layers of varnish which were then sanded to a polished finish, these little ornaments were crafted with perhaps only three or four coats of Modge Podge. They were sent to our family from relatives for our Christmas trees last year. Each vintage postcard image was mounted onto a thin, painted, wooden block and then the edges and corners were lightly sanded to give a worn, homey appearance to the ornament. The hangers are made of thick black wire topped off with a white button.
       I also have a selection of old postcard images here on my blog that crafters may use to make similar ornaments, if they'd like.

More Decoupage Christmas Ornament Crafts:
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Friday, December 6, 2013

Craft A Christmas Candy Wrap Jester from A Clothespin!

       This little clothespin, doll ornament is decked out in left-over candy wrappers and gold tinsel that I saved during the holiday festivities. I guess you could say that I'm "old school" meaning that I am always looking to recycle the little bits of trim and foils that most people just toss away these days. This is not to say that I can't go out to a hobby shop and purchase 1.00 sheets of fancy paper; I just can't bear to throw away cute candy wrappers and so these eventually are used for decorating the tree somehow.
       This little jester is just one of many clothespin dolls that I have crafted over the years. His face and hands were made with Cernit Oven-Bake Modeling Clay pressed into Polyform molds. Sculpey makes many small press molds of detailed doll parts for crafts like the one pictured below. You can find all kinds of these molds in your local craft and hobby stores. 
       I use wood glue to apply foil trims with. Usually I have to clamp the tinsel temporarily while the glue dries but it is worth the extra trouble in order to avoid messier hot glue application. Also, tinsel heats up when it is applied with a hot glue and you are more likely to burn yourself during the process if you're not careful. 
       I wrapped his pointed hat, body and arms in foil then wrapped his neck with a bushy tinsel collar. Then I painted his features with a white acrylic paint to imitate "clown white" or "grease paint." Lastly I added a few bright features: a yellow smile and red rosy cheeks and outlined these with a permanent felt tipped marker.
The above pictures illustrate a jester clothespin doll as it looks from four different angles.
See additional examples of clothespin/spool dolls:
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Punch Snowflakes to Craft A Christmas Tree?

      A few of our distant relations sent us this nice little handmade Christmas card this year. I thought that the use of a snowflake punch quite novel. Who would have thought to use green snowflakes to create a three-dimensional effect for a Christmas tree? Obviously, somebody did. The card was not crafted by our relations but I enjoy it just the same. 
       The crafter added a few jewels and a few cardboard cut-out letters to four layers of frames in order to create even more texture. Perhaps our family will make something similar to hang on the tree? This technique would look just as nice on a wreath ornament I think.
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