Wynken, Blynken & Nod Wreath

The Concord Museum has a wonderful collection, including Ralph Waldo Emerson's study, Henry David Thoreau's desk from his Walden cabin and the Paul Revere lantern from 1775 ("one if by land and two if by sea...").  You can find the museum website HERE.  If you live in this area and have never been to the museum it is well worth a visit and from now until the end of the year you will also be able to see the Family Trees exhibit.

Family Trees is a special event that has been held at the museum for the past seventeen years.  Volunteers decorate trees with a children's book as the inspiration.  Some of the trees are decorated by the author or illustrator of the book.  This event is a fundraiser for the educational initiatives at the museum.  You can read more about the Family Trees event HERE.

Over the years I have decorated quite a few trees.  The photo above is from last year when I decorated a tree with my neighbor.  The book was called Dear Mermaid and you can read about that tree HERE.

This year I did something different - a wreath for one of the passageways.  I thought it would be easier to do a wreath but I found it a bit challenging to include everything I wanted to include in such a small space.  I had to edit my ideas to focus on the highlights of the story and skip some of the minor details.

The book I did this year was the poem Wynken, Blynken, & and Nod, written by Eugene Field and beautifully illustrated by Johanna Westerman.  The wonderful shades of blue throughout the book appealed to me and the poem is an old favorite.  The poem was published on March 9, 1889 and was originally titled Dutch Lullaby. 

The moon is quite prominent in the book illustrations and I knew that I needed to make a similar three dimensional moon.  Of course, the most important item was the wooden shoe to turn into the boat.

It took some searching but I found a small pair of wooden shoes in a local antique shop.  I'll have to think of something to do with the extra shoe!  My husband drilled a few extra holes for the rope and the mast and I set about transforming the shoe into a boat.

I made the mast from a small flag stick and added a skewer as a crosspiece (I think this is called the spar?).  Then I sewed a small sail and stitched the loops at the top.  The small red striped flag is actually going the wrong direction in this photo - it should be headed to the front showing the direction of the wind as it fills the sail (I learned this from my friend at the museum - can you tell I am not a sailor!).

I didn't have a lot of room inside the wooden shoe boat so I made the three children from pegs.  Here they are part way through the painting process.Their hair is doll hair that I found in one of many boxes of craft items that I have been saving.  I "dyed" some of it with spray inks.  I added red dots and blue stripes with ProMarkers afer the white paint on the boys had dried.  I also added some Frosted Lace Stickles to the little girl's dress.

I drew the fish shape using a photo as a guide and cut out lots of fish in two sizes going in opposite directions.  I used the Silhouette software and Cameo machine to do this.  The blue holographic paper helps to catch the light.

The mesh I used to make the nets was in the holiday section at Costco - I had to buy two giant rolls so I'll be thinking up some other crafty projects to use it up!  The open weave looks a lot like the book illustration and I liked the strips of silver woven through the mesh.

The fish were arranged in "schools" and I used Scor-Tape to attached the securely to the mesh.

 

Here is the wreath "in progress."  I dyed some shimmery light blue fabric with Adirondack spray ink to make it a shade similar to the blues in the book.  I wove it in and out around the bottom of the wreath to represent the sea.

After I had the wreath in place in the museum, I added some small gems positioned to catch the light and sparkle.

I used a piece of gold sequin waste mesh to create a sort of "bridge" for the boat to sail across.  The sequin waste is wired to the two sides of the wreath and the shoe sole has two pieces of two inch wide Scor-Tape to hold it on the mesh.  The gold circles make an interesting reflection on the side of the shoe in this photo.

If a visitor is following the normal sequence of rooms, this is the first view of the wreath.

From the opposite direction you can see through to the period room beyond.

I cut a styrofoam ball in half and dyed some old white pantyhose with distress stains and white metallic mixative alcohol ink to create the craters.  Then I sprayed the moon with perfect pearls to give it a shimmery shine.

I cut the face from vinyl and applied it to the moon, adding some gems for the eyes.  You can see one of the additional iridescent cubes just to the right of the moon - these are meant for flower bouquets but I added anything I could to get a lot of sparkle on the wreath.   At the last minute I found the tiny seed lights.  They are LED and run on a battery pack with a timer so they will light up the wreath six hours a day during the exhibit.  I'll have to check the batteries every so often.

It was very difficult to take a straight on photo since the passageway is only a few feet wide.  This is the final wreath.  The lighting from above makes odd shadows but this was the best I could do.

I'll explain how I created the moon face and the fish in a future post.

Here are a few more photos of the wreath.  The star garland at the top is made using the DCWV Dazzle cardstock.  No glittered objects are permitted in the museum but this paper has a great sparkle with no risk of glitter shedding on the floor.

Do you ever decorate with a very specific theme or are your decorations more "generic."  It's fun to try to make a tree or wreath represent a book and it would be a great project to do with children.  Some of the trees at the museum are done by school groups.

Don't forget about the Creative Memories "Stuff Your Stockings" sale - you can read all of the details in yesterday's post HERE.

I'll be adding some of the blue holographic paper and some of the sparkly mesh to the box that one lucky reader will win at the end of the month.  (sorry the photo is not updated yet).

in the box so far...

1.  2 sheets of the sticky paper I used for the glittered ornament card
2.  A new set of the same Inkadinkado Autumn Leaves stamps I used on the card
3.  An 18 inch piece of the brown leaf ribbon - enough for a few cards.
4.  A small bag of plastic gems.
5.  A piece of blue holographic paper.
6.  A small piece of the white and silver mesh I used for the nets.

All comments on posts in the month of November will be eligible for a random draw at the end of the month.  One lucky reader will receive the small priority mail box full of bits and pieces.

You can leave a comment on every post to increase your chances but please just leave one per post and make sure that you give me enough information so I can contact you if your comment is drawn.

I hope your Thanksgiving preparations are well in hand - I still have lots to do but it will all be done in time (fingers crossed!).  Have a great day!


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Christmas World - Part Two

I am glad that so many of you enjoyed the photos from the Trend show at the ChristmasWorld trade show.   If you missed that post you can find it HERE.  There was a second creative display area within the ChristmasWorld show.  The photos I have from inside the show are from this area or from stands that allowed a few photos to be taken. 

These paper stars with pierced designs are so pretty with all sorts of patterns pierced in the points.  When we lived in Germany I learned to make similar stars with plain paper.  I want to try to create some of my own designs for next year.  It probably is more cost effective to purchase commercially made stars - it does take a lot of paper to create just one star. 

These Golden Piggies were at the entrance to one of the main halls.  The sign in front of these figures explained an old tradition of fasting on Christmas Eve day.  Children were told that they would be rewarded by the Golden Piggy if they didn't eat all day - waiting for the Christmas Eve feast.

Pigs are also a symbol of good luck in Germany.  When we lived in Germany, my husband was given little pig figures by his coworkers before he took the German driving test - we still have them!

The special display area was in the back of this hall.  There were a series of these "igloo" domes set up with different decorating themes inside.

One featured these chandeliers made of different types of lights.

These watering cans were hanging from the ceiling of another dome.  There were a lot of floral and garden stands in the ChristmasWorld show.  I think some garden centers double up as Christmas shops to help with their slow season.

This dome was full of lavish decorations in peach and lavender.

Several areas had lighted rings to create hanging mobiles of ornaments.

I thought the pattern on these large globes was very pretty.

There were lots of these large flowers made of lights.  The colorful people in the center are walking little dogs...

...pink and purple poodles!

There were plants and more electric flowers around the edges of the dome.

Don't throw away any old lampshades you might have - you can strip them and add tinsel and lights to make sparkling decorations like this.

Outside the domes there were lots of trees - some made of flowers and some with bare branches.  There were also fluffy reindeer with lights.

The trees coming out of the pots of chrysanthemums were pretty but seemed odd to me since we use the mums as fall decorations here in New England.

The trees made of flowers were scattered throughout the display area.

 This photo gives you a sense of the size of the hall - it was enormous and the ceilings were very high.

There were a lot of large Christmas trees along the back wall - along with this "tree lady."  (Yes it looked very odd in person as well!).

Many of the vendors did not want photos to be taken - they are trying to avoid copying of their merchandise.  There were a few that allowed us to take photos.  This white, gold and silver display was one of my favorites.

While the trees are quite lovely, many of them are decorated with items that have tags to help in the placing of orders.  I tried to crop in on an area with no tags but there is one left in this photo.

There were color themes and displays of the ornaments for that scheme.

Purple seemed to be a popular color (remember there were some interesting purple ornaments in the trend show).  It was fun to see all of the variations of purple reindeer hanging along the rail.

This was the tree in the purple area - the large tags are distracting but practical - after all, most of the viewers are there to buy for their shops and need to get through a lot of booths to make their choices.

We saw lots of these fancy flowers that clip on to the trees.  Clips make it easy to place the items just where you want them and they stay put instead of dangling.

In addition to glass and other tree ornaments, there were lots of figures and decorations like these snowmen, polar bears and penguins.

There were many stands with all sorts of outdoor lighting and trees.  This large tree (about 10 feet tall) was one of my favorites.

Mandy and I were looking for items that might work for papercrafters and we were excited to see these large flattened glass ornaments.  We asked about them and found out that the photos inside are not changeable - there was a line of several sizes with about six different cute photos of children.  I am not sure why you would want to hang photos of children that were not in any way related to you on a tree...it would be much nicer if you could customize them with your own family photos!

It was interesting to see that several booths had suspended the trees from bars in the ceiling and then displayed most of the ornaments by hanging them at the bottom of the tree.

The amount of shine and color (more purple here...) was almost overwhelming - you needed to get away from it all after a while.

I wonder how long it takes to set up some of the displays - there are so many breakable items to deal with and they need to be arranged nicely to capture the attention of the buyers who are ordering for their shops.

Some displays may have been done ahead of time and shipped assembled like this tree form stuffed with crumpled paper.

In this close view you can see the ornaments stuck in between the papers.  The texture of the crumpled paper was very interesting.

Another tree in the same area had a center made up of ornaments and bubble wrap cushions on both sides.

I liked these display trees - another thing that you could try on a smaller scale at home.

An elaborate spray in natural colors...

Lots of shiny ornaments put together to make an enormous tree...

And last but not least - an Easter themed tree.

That's all I have to show you from ChristmasWorld.  We didn't get around to all of the halls but it was a great way to fill the first day before the other two shows opened.  The next post I do from the trip will show you some of CreativeWorld (I'll probably need to split that up into several posts).


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