Christmas Lights

When do the Christmas lights go up in your area?  In our town it is pretty common to put the outdoor decorations up during the weekend after Thanksgiving.   Thanksgiving was early this year and  we haven't put anything out yet but some of our neighbors are fully decorated already. 

While I am away for a few days, I thought I share a link back to a post from last year.  We went on a trip to visit our son and daughter-in-law in Spain and saw the most wonderful lights in Madrid.  You can see all of the photos and read more about it HERE.

These were the most unusual lights - they look like they are floating over the market.  If you check the other photos, you'll see that there is an elaborate systems of wires suspending the lights.

Have a great Monday - I'll be in upstate New York and I am crossing my fingers that the snow stays away!  


Subscribe to Capadia Designs if you would like to have new posts delivered directly to your email.

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!


Subscribe to Capadia Designs if you would like to have new posts delivered directly to your email.

Christmas Lights in Madrid

When we went to visit our son and daughter-in-law after Thanksgiving, we spent the first couple of days in Madrid.  They live in a smaller city south of Madrid and came up on the train to meet us.  The holiday lights were up and there were some displays that were different than the lights I have typically seen here in the US.  I thought I'd share some of my photos so you could get a look at the unusual displays.

Each of the streets leading up to the main plaza had a different style of lighted decorations.  These colorful balls of light were interesting.  I wondered why the third  one was half red and half green instead of solid green...

The scale of the decorations was very large.  In the day time you could see how they were constructed.

 

At night the structures disappear and all you see is an amazing light show.  The streets were very crowded at about ten o'clock at night - it was dinner time!

The snowflakes on the large department store building moved in interesting patterns.

When we walked to the plaza in the daytime, this tree looked rather odd.  It was extremely tall and had a path below that you could walk through.

At night, the plaza was full of people and the lighted tree was a big attraction, with long lines of people waiting to go through the tree.

Along the main street near our hotel there were cityscapes repeated every half block or so.  They continued down the street as far as we could see.

This starry blue sky was very twinkly.  It was in an area a little bit away from the main lights - I think it was on some sort of government building like a library.

The most unusual display was the "ceiling" of lights over another plaza where there was a Christmas market going on.  In this daytime shot you can see the wires and cables that suspend the lights.  They are round discs in different colors and patterns and they are hovering over the plaza like flying saucers!

It's hard to describe the feeling that we had walking under this ceiling of light.  The effect was magical and a bit surreal.  In the photo directly above you can get a feel of the size of the plaza.  (just click on any photo to see it larger)  There were so many of the lighted discs.  It must have been quite an engineering puzzle to get them suspended so they could float above the crowds.

This was yet another type of light along one of the streets that led to the plaza.  I thought it was interesting that they had so many different designs.  I wonder if there was a competition or challenge given to some designers to come up with unique patterns for each street.

The tall Christmas tree was an interesting combination of green circles in various sizes and red stars and hearts.

When we came back through the plaza after our dinner the crowds were mostly gone and we were able to walk right in to the tree.  I tried to get a shot straight up the center of the tree.  The effect was very interesting as you could see all of the segments tapering to the tip of the tree.

This was my favorite photo of the evening - the newlyweds with one of the hearts behind them!

I hope you enjoyed the lights.  It is interesting to see how different cities and countries decorate for the holidays.  I liked the bold graphic designs which were very different than the typical New England window candles and white twinkly lights.  The designs are also great inspiration for some card or page layouts - I hope to be able to create a few items inspired by the lights.

We're in the final countdown now - I am determined to have everything wrapped before Christmas Eve!  I did see the questions about the dimensions of the lollipop tree and I will try to empty it to take a photo and also take the measurements and post them tomorrow.  Thanks for the suggestions on where to get the tootsie pops.  I could always change to a different type of lollipop.  I have seen bags of the tootsie pops but I was hoping to find the huge boxes I used to get at Costco.


Have a great day and don't forget to check to see what new crafty items are added to Blitsy later this morning.

Subscribe to Capadia Designs 

Christmas Trees

 When do you put up your Christmas tree?  Do you put up just one or several?  Real or artificial?  I am a bit obsessed with trees and we have many in our house.  I put the artificial ones up gradually over the month of December.  We also get a live tree each year and we decorate it on Christmas Eve.

You can click HERE to see a post from my first year of blogging where I shared some photos of our trees and other decorations.  This photo shows the most unusual tree - an "upside down" tree.

Today we will be driving to Granada.  I think it is interesting that this city is at the confluence of three rivers - just like the town of Concord where we live!

(I am on a trip to see our son and daughter-in-law in Spain this week.  I wanted those of you on the email subscription to have something arrive each morning as usual, so I am sharing photos and short updates.  If I have internet access and time I will try to add some new photos from Spain when possible.  I have lots of crafty projects lined up to tackle when we get back, so stay tuned!).

Subscribe to Capadia Designs