Every December I become a Christmas elf. Making felt toys, crafting decorations, and hand-painting cards to mail to family and friends.
Several years ago, I made a giant advent calendar for my kid. We add her favorite candies, and a few small store-bought items, like a sticker, or a small animal toy. But my favorite thing is to make lots of felt toys, ornaments, and jewelry for her. It is my favorite holiday tradition. Every morning for 25 days she is surprised with something delicious or a gift selected just for her. Making holiday and birthday traditions is one of my favorite parts of being someone's mama. Creating magic and making someone feel special with my ability for art and craft brings me a whole lot of joy.
I made the felt wall art, tree skirt, mushrooms, and snowflake wall decor, tree topper, as well as many of the ornaments. The faux tree looks sort of sad at the base, so I made faux bark out of foam clay, a old pool noodle, and some paint!
Diy tree skirt, and paper clay Amanitas! They look so festive under the tree. If you'd like to get into the lore behind these magic mushrooms and their connection to Christmas click here.
Under the tree has now become a playground for some of those handmade toys!
Many handmade ornaments. They range from sewn felt applique, paper clay, polymer clay, baubles, and antique medicine bottles. Here are just a few of them, in the order that they appear above 1 & 2. Polyclay and crystal 3. a Taylor Swift cardigan (I have Swifties in the house. I respect her immensely but the songs are annoyingly catchy and it gets old real quick! ) 4. We were eating Dove chocolates and kept getting this quote wrapper. The repetitive empty platitude had us rolling our eyes. Then it started a narrative around who Libby was and how annoying she must be. And it soon evolved into little comedy bits and an inside joke. I gave it to my husband for Christmas last year and we laughed so hard! 5. I thrifted these antique medicine bottles in my teen years. I turned them ornaments because they catch the lights and look so pretty. They're all different shapes and colors. Of course, I managed to take a pic of the most boring ones I have. 6 & 7. A felt chickadee ornament for my little birder. 8. A paper clay and velvet moon. 9. Paper clay mushroom. And a gold poly clay vagina. I made around 5 of these for the tree. Some are bleeding, some with quartz crystals. Christmas is a celebration of a birth is it not?! And Winter Solctice is the rebirth of the sun! 10. More felt ornaments, gnomes this time (advent calendar gifts from past years.)
These are the winter folk people, winter goddess, and winter Sun child I made many years ago. I made them as holiday decor, I thought they would look cute lined up on a shelf. But the kid played with them and they became toys. These guys sparked the toy-making thing. She kept making requests for different animals, fairies, and goddesses from mythology around the world. Now she has an African basket overflowing with felt toys I've made!
This year I am making a bunch of things for the advent calendar. Here are a few:
A tiny paper clay ornament of her favorite creature! My parents chihuahua is so attached to my kid. The relationship they have is the stuff of movies 💗
A gold sorting hat ornament with red velvet loop.
I am making a few earrings too...
Luna Lovegood earrings for a Harry Potter-obsessed kid!
A little witch! Her black cat will show up one morning here very soon!
And the best part of my tradition of a handmade Christmas/Yule is that it is rubbing off onto my kid. Last year, on Christmas morning, she surprised us with this set of Rudolph ornaments she made!
I hope you get into the Christmas crafting spirit this year too! Now it's time for me to prep for winter solstice celebrations. After that, and after wrapping a few more gifts, I plan to do nothing productive for the rest of the month. It's all Christmas lights, holiday cookies, and cozy Christmas movies from here on. I have a pretty hefty to-read pile too. I anticipate lots of pages read by candle light and by the Christmas tree. I am hoping for a fee snowy walks here soon so we can enjoy these dark winter nights. Happy winter!
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