On par with my usual crafting timelines, here I am over a year later finally completing the project that I started talking about last year. I purchased a set of stockings and mittens that look knit and are backed with felt from Factory Direct Craft last year. This year they are hanging from the garland on my stairway.

I originally wanted to use the Jesse tree story to be the basis for my ornaments, but found that those types of symbolic ornaments are hard to come by. Instead, I ran across these cute ornaments from Hobby Lobby on the cheap, and decided to make my own nativity scene animals to go with them.

The ornaments from Hobby Lobby looked like polymer clay. I’ve never used polymer clay (at least not since I was a kid) but I figured I could handle making a few animals. I bought Sculpey III clay from Amazon, and there it sat for another few months before I finally sat down, the night before they needed done, and started my clay animals.

My first animals were the camels, and you may be able to tell. I was least happy with how these turned out, but I doubt Jameson will care. This clay was little harder to work with than some of the other colors.

I had a lot of trouble keeping my nails from scarring the clay, which you can see in these close ups. From farther away though, you can’t tell.

The next day, I made all the rest of the animals in the same amount of time it took me to make just two the day prior, about an hour and fifteen minutes. The rest of the animals were easier. I used pictures online of other polymer clay animals to get the basic idea of what I wanted for my own.

In order to make them ornaments, I needed to bake them with an eye-pin in them (perfectly safe to bake it with metal at the 275 degrees that Sculpey III clay requires). To make sure the eye-pins don’t come out, you bend the eye-pin in the shape of an L before pushing them into the clay.

The sheep were my favorite to make. I started with a base white ball and made lots of little balls to stick on around it, with more balls for head and feet in black. The eyes were hardest, because the shapes needed to be so small.

I carefully put them in the over on an older metal pan and made sure to use an in-oven thermometer to verify the temperature was 275 degrees. I had read that temperature is key for properly cured polymer clay and an oven thermometer is recommended. I had my oven between 285-290 to keep it at 275 for the duration of the baking, which was about 45 minutes for these guys.

I used cross stitch thread for hanging them, since that is easily and securely knotted. (I had first tried a thin beading string but it wasn’t secure enough) All told, there are about 10 snowflakes interspersed with nativity animals and the figurines.

Jameson enjoyed opening the first two (since I was a day late). I made sure an animal was in one of them, since that is quite a bit more exciting than a snowflake. He’s not good at hanging, but he will show us where he wants his ornaments hung.

In addition to our advent stockings, we are also doing the chocolates, opening one of the small cardboard doors each day. We got great chocolate for it, each individually wrapped, from Harry & David. I was expecting I might be able to have some since Jameson hasn’t been too into candy, but apparently he knows the good stuff when he sees it and is eating it all.

He was a little hyper Monday night, running and jumping around like a maniac and taking a good 45 minutes to fall asleep. Last night we tried giving it to him right after work in hopes of toning the hyper down right before bed, but it only worked so-so. Turns out that giving a toddler chocolate in the evening is not a great idea! We may have to move to mornings if things don’t get better, haha.

Jameson has also been asking nearly every night, about 3 times in a row, who all the nativity scene people are in our set. “Dis?” Goat. “Dis?” Cow. He knows the baby, and has started identifying Mary and Joseph and Jesus’s mom and dad. Or just “mommy” and “daddy”. Too funny!

Now that Valentine’s is over, I can safely  move on to Easter.

I mean… well, full disclosure, I have had the materials for Jameson’s Easter basket since this time last year. It’s been sitting in the craft room, under the table, just waiting for a night like Friday night.

Friday night, my eyes were really dry from taking the dry-out-your-sinuses medication (the good stuff), so I didn’t want to watch much TV or read. What better thing to do than whip out my new (year old never used) glue gun and create Jameson’s Easter basket?

I had even pre-printed the directions from Factory Direct Craft (my favorite go-to online craft store).

Before I begin, I should mention that the materials I used were hard to find last year. Apparently they were discontinuing jumbo loopy chenille. Last year when I heard it was being discontinued I actually bought enough to do two, maybe even three, Easter baskets. Ahem. But lucky for you, apparently some colors are still in stock this year whaddayaknow.

My Easter basket is extra large, so I used some extra of the materials. Here’s how big my basket is:

That’s the same basket, last year, with Jameson inside it. He wouldn’t fit this year though, so I guess I didn’t have an excuse to wait on this project any longer.

Here’s my materials:

basket
2 hanks (6 yards to a hank) of green jumbo loopy chenille
1 hank of white regular size loopy chenille
1 – 4″ styrofoam ball (after you add the chenille on, it looks like it’s 6″ big)
1 – 1″ white pom pom
2 – big googly eyes
1 – craft stick (aka popsicle stick)
floral u pins (for added security with the glue gun)
hot glue gun

Step 1: Your popsicle stick is going to be the base:

You need to secure that popsicle stick with glue. You’ll be using a lot of glue.

Step 2: Then you stick the ball on top of the stick. And add a bit more glue.

Step 3: Now you get to start wrapping the head. I started with some glue and a floral pin to keep it in place, and just added glue periodically as I wrapped from the bottom up.

Step 4: Once I reached the top, I didn’t cut the chenille. I decided to just use take another floral pin there and go ahead and make my ears (less glue needed then, right?)

I eye-balled the size I wanted the ears, about 6″ long or so. I cut the chenille and glued it down.

Step 5: Then I cut about 10″ or so of the loopy chenille twice, for two cheeks (aka bunny’s muzzle). I made my cheeks a bit bigger after I did the initial 6″ recommended by the directions on Factory Direct Craft because it didn’t seem proportionate to my large basket.

Lots of glue.

Step 6: It’s up to you, but here’s where I went ahead and glued the eyes and nose on, just to make sure everything looked good size-wise.

Step 7: Then it’s time to do the arms. I did my arms with the second hank of green chenille in one go. I wrapped around each handle twice, then secured it with what else – glue – at the back, with the popsicle stick and the bottom of the styrofoam ball.

Step 8: Don’t forget the feet! I did the feet in one swoop as well. In my opinion, the less cutting, the more secure it is, right?

The only way the feet are secured with with a lot of glue, so I tried to glue at major points/seams in the basket where it was structurally more sturdy. I wasn’t too concerned with amounts that way, I just started wrapping until one foot looked big enough, then looped over to do the other foot.

Step 9: The only thing left at this point, you may notice, is the white of the ears and the tail. I used my while chenille and cut two pieces so they’d fit inside the ears. Since I had regular sized chenille instead of jumbo, I doubled the length and folded it in half. You wouldn’t need to do that with jumbo size.

Step 10: For the tail, just take some more white chenille and roll it in a ball. And glue!

You’re all done!

Optional Step 11: You can add ribbon for a bow or whiskers or whatever you like. My mom made a version (much smaller) than this for my Easter basket that I had when I was growing up. Mine was white in the palms of it’s feet, a white muzzle instead of colored, whiskers, and googly eyes with eye lashes.

Correction from my mom: My mom didn’t make my Easter basket (cause I’m not the favorite haha). My grandpa’s cousin made the basket (and also made my mother’s manger scene).

This project was super easy, and I can’t believe I waited a year to do it. I only got hot glue on my fingers twice when doing the white chenille inside the ears.