Dept 56 Storybook Village

My Dept 56 Storybook cabinet

Mardi Gras Vignette

Mardi Gras Village

Fall trees done!

Here are the trees all done. I think I finally came up with a tree for fall I'm happy with.

What I really love about these is they bend!

I had lots of trouble fitting the lemax trees around houses or landscape features. I can work with these better.

Craft fair

Everything went great with our vacation. My sister loved the cauldron. She took me to a huge crafting store in Lancaster.

At the end of the week we went to the Lilitz craft fair. Where I discovered Puka pods! I bought lots!

Here are some of the booths from the crafts fair. The primitive art dolls I just loved.

If you don't have a lot of space to display a Christmas village these might be perfect. They are very small wooden houses that are very collectible. The best thing is they only cost about 8 to 9 dollars each.

These last are by a local artist I asked her if I could take a picture for everyone. We had a very good time, spent lots of money but only got through half the fair. It was time to go home back to Texas.

Witch's Cauldron

Finished the cauldron this morning! I hope she likes it.

This is getting me in the Halloween spirit!

Witch's Cauldron

I'm putting the garden on hold for a few weeks! LOL We are going on vacation next week and I forgot  I promised my sister I would make her a vignette out of my cauldrons and Witch house's. So I got busy this weekend.

I bought these two cauldrons last halloween at a yard sale for 2.00 each.

I cut out the sides with a jigsaw so I could put these two together one was too small for the pieces I want to put in them.

This was the tricky part trying to fit them together. I trimmed and trimmed till I got them as close as I could.

My husband has all kinds of silicone that he uses on his jobs,. this one is black and takes a little longer to dry than normal silicone it is also very sticky.

It did the trick and filled the seams really well.

I cut two pieces of styro foam to fit the bottom. I had to trim them down so the Witches Brew Haus would fit with the top clearing the rim of the cauldron so the witches can fly around the top!

Here I trimmed the second styro piece to fit the two table pieces I want to add. One a little higher than the other, Plus room for the witches tree.

Checking to make sure everything is sitting level and has it's own place with room. I do have some major cracks and seams that are showing those need to be filled. And I want this to be stronger so the cauldrons can be moved around and packed up for the year with no damage.

One of the easiest things to use to fill in around styro foam is Spray foam insulation. But you have to work fast. It will expand a lot! LOL Here I put a lot in cause I want it to fill in around the sides and in the middle seam.

I used two heavy coffee mugs to weight down the styro as the foam expands. See it coming around the sides-- that's what I want now just let it dry overnight.

Now that it's dry I used a serrated knife to trim the insulation and make it flat. Next is painting the ground and rocks. Acrylic paints work great on styro.

I'm going to spread some ground cover while the paint is still wet so I don't have to use glue. I mixed different materials using fall colors to make the vignette more festive.

Here it's covered. That is all I got done on Sunday and this monday morning. Now I'm going to work. When I get home I'll try to finish.

I found these florals at Micheals and Joann's over the weekend. I'm going to separate them make little plants to go with the witches pieces. See ya tomorrow.