Paula Walton's spun cotton ornament-making notes
A look at some of the great ornaments made by fellow spun cotton artists.
I received these photos today from a very generous customer, who was kind enough to show me how the ornament I made for him looks on his Christmas tree. It is such a lovely festive tree that I asked for permission to share the photos with all of you. I hope you enjoy seeing them as much as I did! Wishing you joy and happiness in the few remaining days before Christmas.
Last winter I became interested in the history of cotton wrapped Christmas trees. Not exactly spun cotton ornaments, but still a related craft.
So in the interest of experimentation, I saved one of my Christmas trees. After almost a full year, it is finally needle free! So far the one thing I have found out for sure is that it’s really hard to keep certain family members, you know who you are, from throwing away a dead Christmas tree – even if you hide it!!!
As it gets a bit closer to Christmas I will be attempting to spin a layer of cotton around all the little twigs and branches on this tree. Check back in here to see my progress with my latest spun cotton obsession…
What do you do if you are a spun cotton artist and your son is getting married??? Make a spun cotton cake topper of course!
Not the best photos, but I think they will give you some ideas. Since I had to alter the bride’s wedding dress, I did have scraps of the actual dress to use when costuming the bride figure. The clothing on the cake topper couple matches that of the real life bride and groom, right down to the bride’s elbow length black lace gloves! Unfortunately I did not know that my new daughter-in-law was going to wear her hair up until a few days before the wedding(a smart decision on her part because the wedding day was HOT), and by then it was too late to change her tiny counterpart’s hairdo 🙂
If the cake photos are making you feel like you need to rush to your kitchen and bake, you can check out the recipes I used by visiting my blog Paula Walton’s 18th Century Home Journal.
If you are a class member of my Spun Cotton Ornament class make sure you head on over to the Class Member only Ning site today or tomorrow for one last look at the five instructional videos. I splurged and added two months of video capability to the class site as my Christmas present to everyone and now we are down to the last two days!!!
There are three videos on constructing a basic spun cotton ornament and two on how to costume your figures in crepe paper and cotton batting clothing.
I hope you have all enjoyed your Christmas present 🙂
Are you all set for the big day on Sunday? Here’s a little inspiration to put you in the mood for all those trick – or – treaters!
Click here to read all the details about this set of ornaments.
I finally had time this week to play around with some of the great striped crepe paper that I bought from Castle in the Air. I’m sure you all know how it is. You see something really great (in this case crepe paper), buy it and add it to your stash, thinking that someday it’s going to be just perfect for something…..
The May Queen is my first project using this very graphic yellow and black striped paper. I had a lot of fun making her. And by the way, if you are thinking “hey, she missed May Day by a month”, I prefer to think of it as being 11 months ahead of schedule in preparation for 5/1/11. 🙂
Some of you may already be familiar with Maria Pahls and her wonderful spun cotton ornaments. If you aren’t, then it’s my pleasure to introduce you to her whimsical world of spun cotton figures.
Maria is a friend that I’ve never actually had the pleasure of meeting in person. We started chatting back and forth a few years ago via email because we are both in the Early American Life Holiday Directory of Traditional Crafts.
Here are some photos of her work that Maria has shared with me over the past several years. If you love her work and would like to see more, she has two auctions up on eBay right now that end on Sunday (2/21/10) night, Spun Cotton Cat Putz Feather Tree ornament Antique style and Spun Cotton Pug Dog Ornament German Putz Feather tree . You can also find a selection of Maria’s work on Etsy at her shop MRCROWSGARDEN.
As promised, here are some photographs that Mary Goddard, one of the two Bamboo Batting Give Away winners, sent in to share with us all. Mary actually sent these to me on 2/1, but I’ve been so busy working on getting my Izannah Walker Reproduction Doll Class ready, that I haven’t found a moment until now to get this post written. I just had to get these photos up before Valentine’s Day, to show off Mary’s “Little Miss Queen of Hearts”.
Mary told me that she made lots of these Christmas Ornaments for friends and family and only saved one for herself. “Little Miss Queen of Hearts” is also a present for a friend. All I can say is that Mary’s friends are very fortunate people.
Mary, thank you for sending these photographs and Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who entered my Bamboo Batting Give Away Contest, and congratulations to the two winners, Maureen Reid and Mary Goddard.
Maureen was sweet enough to send along these photographs of some of her current spun cotton creations. Her website is www.arosewithoutathorn.com if you’d like to see more of her work.
Mary told me that she made lots of cute wrapped cotton girls and Santas as Christmas presents for family and friends this year. They sound adorable. She will be sending photos for us to see in the near future.
I can’t wait to see what Maureen and Mary create with their bamboo batting!
If you would like to share photographs of your ornaments with fellow class members, I would love to put them on this blog. You can email your photos to me at Paula@asweetremembrance.com. Please include your name and any website or blog that you may have to showcase your work.
Many of you have also generously told me when you find new sources for materials, which I have been able to share with everyone on my class mailing list. So if you happen to run across a great place to shop, I’d love to know about it. Email sources to me at Paula@asweetremembrance.com.
Spun Cotton Ornament Journal 