Belznickle Blogspot

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:

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:

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.

Craft a Salt Clay Angel from A Mold

The above Brown Bag Mold was copyrighted in 1986 by Hill Design.

I crafted the molded angel ornament above from salt dough. The mold was produced by "Brown Bag Cookie Art" in 1986 (Angel With Lute) This company is still producing a line of stoneware molds every year I think. Here is their online address. You can also collect Brown Bag Molds online at Ebay so it helps to know the name of the mold you are looking for at least.

You can find the salt clay recipe that I use personally at my arteducationdaily.blog if you'd prefer to try it. There are many salt clay formulas that students can use for a Christmas ornament craft projects that will produce lovely results. I also could have used paper clay in this mold and my angel would have been lighter weight. However, paper clay is significantly more expensive than salt clay. If you use salt clay, you do need to spray the mold with cooking spray before pressing the salt clay into the mold. You must then immediately remove the molded ornament before baking it at 250 degrees for two hours. I tap the edge of my mold gently on a wooden chopping board in order to un-mold the raw salt clay. This takes a bit of practice but the results are well worth it.

After painting my angel with acrylic paints, I then applied a generous coat of gold translucent nail enamel for the finished appearance. You do not always need to use clear varnish on your salt dough ornaments. Experiment a little, try variations and layers of enamel that you ordinarily would not try on a few test pieces before varnishing your final molded ornament!

"Emily Warford Ivey shows us how to personalize our tree with simple

and inexpensive homemade ornaments." Amanda Warford

An Adorable Snowman Craft Using Pine Cones

This is one of my favorite pine cone ornaments! An aunt to our children gave each of my girls one of these handcrafted pine cone decorations for Christmas. The snowmen are made with paper clay, their arms are twigs and their noses tooth-picks painted orange. The craftswoman glued a tiny bottle brush Christmas tree to the center top of the pine cone before adding the snowmen. Then she glued some artificial looking powdered snow around the tiny vignette and also onto the tips of the pine cone as well.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Recycle Peanuts Gift Wrap Into Tags and Ornaments

Here is are two economical, quick and simple ways to decorate a child's Christmas tree or presents with all of his or her favorite characters from Peanuts. I will use these little paper ornaments to decorate a classroom Christmas tree with.

Above is a photo of both the original Peanuts wrapping paper (right) and the cut-outs pasted onto a piece of blue construction paper (left). My children cut the shapes out two to three times after pasting the pictures to red, yellow, blue and green papers. Each time they cut out their little tags, they would leave a narrow boarder around the tag. This made their tags heavier and more durable as well as adding more bright colors to the tags.

These Christmas Peanuts tags may be used to decorate gifts with if you'd prefer. I will hang them on a Peanuts themed Christmas tree in our classroom after they have been laminated; this will ensure that the decorations will last for several years.

Above is a Christmas bauble made by layering Snoopy and Woodstock character wrapping paper onto a light weight plastic Styrofoam ball with white glue. After the glue dries, add a thick coat of acrylic varnish to polish off your Christmas ornament creation!

More Peanuts Ornaments and Christmas Advent Calendars:

Monday, December 2, 2013

Craft a Pine Cone Santa Head Ornament

I made this pine cone Belznickle many years ago. He is a family favorite and is usually displayed near the top and front part of our largest Christmas tree.

At first glance, this ornament looks complicated but it is much simpler to craft than many people believe. It is a very traditional craft. Back in the 1920s, folk artists in the Appalachia mountains made entire Santa/Belznickle figures from pine cones that they had collected from some of the surrounding pine trees. Most of the Appalachia woodlands are made up of deciduous trees but there are also some fine pines and firs mixed into the woods as well.

Victorians, 1837-1903, also crafted Belznickle figures from giant pine cones. Originals of these are rare and highly prized by collectors!

I crafted this Santa head using fur trim and a bit of silk Christmas holly. I simply hot-glued these two decorative elements to the top of my pine cone and painted the lower half with snowy white paint, glued on a bit of glitter and varnished the cone. I chose a cone that was missing some of it's pattern near the top so that I could blend into the cone a face of my own making. I sculpted this face using CelluClay. I repeated the lumpy pattern found on the cone in the shape of cheeks, closed eye lids and the nose with the paper pulp mixture. Then I let the head dry for a few days until I could paint and varnish Santa's features with acrylic paints.

Above is a photo of my CelluClay, papier mâché pulp, both before and after I have mixed it with water. The mixture should have a sticky thick consistency after stirring the water in. It is important to mix these two ingredients well in order to dampen thoroughly the glue that is added to the pulp at the factory. Mixing the correct proportions will take some getting used to. This is a process that you do by experimentation. Don't throw out the mixture if it is too loose, just add more pulp. If it is too dry add more water.

More Examples of Pine Cone Santas or Belznickles:

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