We’ve had a pleasant holiday season in 2011. With friends, family, and belgian waffles, it couldn’t go wrong. We’ve vowed to not give our girls an abundance of toys and plastic, and this always results in a fun and cherishing Christmas morning! I hope your day was cheery and bright.
porcelain ornaments made from crepe myrtle branches!
{click the images to see prices}
jonathan thought that making a coffee cup out of bronze was a much better idea than a cassette tape. i disagreed, but made him a coffee cup anyway and surprised him for christmas.
this is a starbucks cup cast in bronze. it weighs around 15 pounds.
i know its well into january now, but i have yet to show you all of our handmade christmas. this was raine’s gift to jonathan, her own version of a prayer book. she wrote three prayers for each day. i helped with the cover design, its a mock up of a page from the book of kells. jonathan says that this was his favorite gift.
here it is! raine’s first published book, including 4 stories written and illustrated by herself.
this turned out fantastic. shes says that she would like to make more. so perhaps this is merely the beginning. im proud of her and inspired by her stamina…she worked diligently to make this book happen.
and of course, a special thank you to the papa that spent endless nights making this book happen!
a gift for jonathan.
he recently attended a performance (if you will) by michigan-based pastor, rob bell called “drops like stars”. at the end of the night, they passed out bars of soap encouraging individuals to essentially create a work of art with the soap.
so for christmas, i carved jonathan a tiny olive branch out of the soap he received, loaded with christian symbolism. the scroll beside it explains some of the connotations often sited with the branch.
kiki, ezmah's doll, is on the left {named after the incredible artist kiki smith b/c her hair reminded me of hers}, and libby on the right, was made for raine {jonathan named her}.
front
back
these toys were not only made with tons of love, and no money whatsoever, but with 100% recycled materials as well.
all the fabric, rick-rack, and ribbons were hand-me-down scraps from a gracious soul {probably circa 1980ish}, the dowel rods were simply found, the dolls are stuffed with plastic grocery bags (they remain really soft and you can’t hear the bags), the inside of the wands are supported by 6 circle cardboard pieces cut from the bottom of my canned chicken broth package (this was really nice because the perfect cirlces were already made by the indentions that the cans left).
and to boot, the girls love them, though raine has renamed her doll “sam”….
ezmah likes spaghetti,
raine made shadow puppets,
we had a beautiful thanksgiving at the allen house,
later discovered that turkey really does make you sleepy...
ezmah experienced her first white christmas,
dasien was reminded of her heritage,
now we are simply trying to relax.
a planted head in a ‘handsome pedestal container’.
this is a drawing that i gave to suzanne for christmas and realized that it wasnt on my site yet…
from abby
from suzanne
our friends abby and suzanne came over the other night and gave us some pretty amazing gifts. 4 porcelain cups made by abby, as well as some fancy napkins with a great pattern on them. suzanne drew us a picture of a robot with some really nice words pasted on the bottom, as well as an amazing 3-plate intaglio etch she made….and a fantastic new garden book for me to draw in!
i love my friends.
jonathan had the ever-so-brilliant idea to wrap our gifts in newspaper this year!
but wait…we arent just wrapping them in newspaper…but beautiful newspaper.
the new york times newspaper to be exact. have you ever seen their images? usually stunning.
but wait….we arent just wrapping them in beautiful paper. we are wrapping them in beautiful images that give you a hint as to what’s inside of them!
this is so much fun, and not to mention eco-friendly. well, as eco-friendly as newsprint can be. atleast we arent wasting money on rolls of christmas paper when we had an abundance of beautiful newspaper in the art studio just waiting to be used.
merry christmas to you all!
i submitted my christmas color…you should to! what color is christmas to you?…reds and greens need not apply.