Christmas Robins

These were super quick to make and ended up totally adorable! They're made of brown felt and Christmassy fabric with gold ribbon

See? Super cute right?!? I used the red based fabrics that I have, though I might also make some with the green and gold fabrics I have cos why not?

Close ups of each of them because they are equally adorable. Also, they are both double sided for twice the cuteness!

I used little seed beads for the eyes because they looked sad without eyes and who could inflict sadness on such a cutie?!?

And here's where I show off their true potential as adorable chocolate holding tree ornaments. Only a smallish chocolate, true, but they could equally be filled with a heartfelt message to a loved one, a pinch of fairy dust, or any other tiny gift. And then of course they will hand nicely on your tree

The chocolates shown here are about the same size as a quality street/roses chocolate, so all the traditional Christmas chocolates should fit in here. But not all at once. That would be ridiculous. The robin is also fairly free-hanging in this picture, showing that the chocolates do not make him weirdly weighted or anything.

So there you have it. I'm thinking of putting these on my etsy in time for Christmas. No idea how much to sell them for. They take about 30-60 mins each. Thoughts?

Summary:

Cute as anything

Successful start to my Christmas crafts adventures

I can totes draw things! (yes I designed these entirely by myself. I'm as amazed as anyone!)

Gonna make so many more of these

Also have so much more confidence about the other stuff I wanna make

Venetian Mask

So I went to Venice in the summer. And loved it. Which is unsurprising as I have wanted to go since I was 12 years old and first read City of Masks. Which is still an amazing book.

Anyways. I decided while I was there that I would try and learn how to make pretty masks in the same style as the ones i saw when I was there. And that is what I have done. I bought a basic mask with no prettiness to it and made it pretty. One day I might learn how to make the basic mask too. But I suspect the only way to do that at an affordable cost it so make several million of them at once in a factory. So for now... not gonna happen!

I have two versions and I would like people to tell me which they prefer

The one with silver/pearl is the original, then I painted gold over the detailing for a more traditional colour pairing. I think I prefer the original though

In the future I intend to be a bit more adventurous and stick interesting things onto it in true Venetian style. But for now just painted prettily. I have a plan for a Harlequin inspired one that i'll be working on once I have all the paints I need. This was mostly a test run to make sure my techniques worked how I thought they would

I really like curlicues, and practise drawing them a lot which turned out to work well because it means I now have a very steady hand for them, which was important here. The design was come up with as it went along so the side shown above is a bit less neat than the side below, because after one half I had gotten enough practise to do it better

Really I was very impressed by how pretty this came out looking. Though there is stuff I could have done better, of course.

I used gold acrylic paint over the detailing and while I think it works alright, the pearly colour did work better I think. Serves me right for trusting tradition over my own unerring grasp of colour matching I guess!

In Summary

These are quick and fun to make, if you ignore the several days worth of drying time.

They also come out looking very pretty indeed.

This week I will get the paint for the harlequin mask and see if that works just as well.

I still dislike gold as a colour. Not sure if that will ever stop being true...

Please, let me know which mask you prefer - is it just me not liking gold or does the pearl actually work better?