Christmas in July Swap - What I Made for Manu

Yay, it is Friday evening in New Zealand and my weekend is just beginning.

Yesterday I wrote about the lovely swap gifts I received from Manu. Tonight I am going to write about the items I made for Manu.

Below is a few of the items I set before myself in an attempt to come up with some ideas for making miniatures from recycled items. I spread all sorts in front of me hoping something would come to mind - it took a while but eventually I came up with a few ideas.

These are the items I sent to Manu.

Starting from the top left, I made a large outdoor planter (2" x 2").

This started life as the centre of a cardboard drinks holder from a takeaway food place.

I sealed the planter with Gesso and then painted it with a textured railway paint. I followed this with a wash of what was supposed to be grey paint but which turned out to be green. After it was dry I lightly went over the top with some sandpaper to remove some of the green paint.

Next is a little woven box of Christmas decorations. The box itself is made of pieces of card from the 1996 calendar you can see on the top photo. I had no design, I just wove paper and played around until I had something resembling a box. I am quite pleased with the way it turned out. I hope I can make another one for myself.

 



The Christmas tree is simply a tinsel pipecleaner wound around in a tight circle and then you grab the centre and the end and pull them away from each other. It is finished off by placing the bottom end in a piece of wood so it can stand. I glued a little glass star on the top.

Inside the box is also a miniature paper chain made from little strips of paper approx. 3mm x 16mm linked through each other and a folder paper decoration made from two lengths of 3mm wide paper folder over each other at right angles.

The next item was a little coffee table. The table is made of a small scrap of wood for the table top with patterned paper glued on top from the inside of an envelope. Over this I poured some resin I had left over from a kit to give it a nice glazed look.

The legs are made from two plastic spacers that we get in boxes of takeaway pizza. You can see the pizza spacers in the top photo (the three pronged things). I cut one prong off each spacer and glued the rest of each spacer under the table to give it four legs.

The next item is a little coat rack to hang on the wall. This I made out of a scrap of wallpaper, which I sanded to give a worn look, an ice block stick, some haberdashery hooks & eyes and a gold pen. I have previously blogged about this item:
www.myrtlemanorminiatures.blogspot.com/2013/06/hooks-and-eyes.html

I initially wasn't going to send this to Manu as I wasn't very happy with it but I did decide to enclose it with the swap items in the end.

Also in the above picture is a little bread board. This is a very thin piece of wood covered with strips of inlay in two different colours.

The plate is made from an old New Zealand Christmas stamp depicting Christmas time in New Zealand (below left). We have a summertime Christmas in New Zealand. The picture was simply glued on thin card and shaped into the shape of a plate and then sealed with varnish.

I also enclosed a few old New Zealand Christmas stamps. Old stamps can be great for framed pictures, miniature plates, miniature photo album covers and I am sure a whole lot more.

Finally the cushion was made from a piece of embroidery cut from an old table napkin, which can be seen in the top picture. I know Manu likes pink so I wanted to include something pink amongst the swap gifts.

With much relief I had finished the items for the swap in time and I packaged them into a recycled box with a blue napkin wrapped around them.  I covered the box with scraps of wallpaper left over from a project, wrote a note in a handmade card and sent it on its way from New Zealand to Italy.

Have a fun and creative weekend everyone.