Twelveth Day

Well, it's the 12th Day of Christmas and it's time to take down the decorations. For some reason this year I enjoyed them more than usual and wasn't ready to put things away. The long New Year's weekend gave me an excuse, then it was that the 12 days weren't over yet. Today's the day, though, ready or not. There are other projects to tackle!

Here are two Santa ornaments that I have made the last couple of years. They originate from a vintage Martha Stewart show from what I call the "BP days". That would be "Before Prison" as opposed to the "AP shows" of today that are fun, but more along the lines of a talk show. In the "BP" shows, Martha had more detailed projects and this was one of them. They are meant to be reproductions of old German Dresden ornaments made with cotton batting. I have tried to find the instructions for this on the MSL web site so I could include the link, but I think they have been lost to history.

Sometimes I coffee or tea dye the batting to make it look older, but for the yellow one I actually used some leftover Procion fabric dye from a different project. (I try to never dump unused dye down the drain. Even if I just soak it up with, or brush it over, a blank piece of muslin, I always find a way to use it up.) These two ornaments also have glitter on them. One has vintage German glass glitter. The faces are scanned and printed from old Christmas cards. I am always charmed by the ones that look like Old World St. Nicholas or Father Christmas figures. I have also made some using German scrap paper with a gold metallic finish. You can find supplies for similar projects by searching for Geman scrap or Dresden on either of these two sites: www.joggles.com or www.blumchen.com