HOMAGE TO GNOMAGE...

Greetings, dear reader!

As promised, I am back with a few of the many MANY gnome inspired crafts I've been creating...the Magic Cottage is being completely overrun! The snowmen are having to make way for the gnomes and they are NONE to happy about it...

However the snowmen see how industrious the little fellows are and decided perhaps they would get neighborhood clean-up of some of the riff-raff..

 

and so they relented. They did realize how friendly, kind and hardworking gnomes could be...why just look at the neighborhood where gnomes reside!

A far cry from the dirt and grime of the snowman "hood":

(This photo is blurred because it was taken in a drive-by shooting...it's not good to get out of the car and shoot snowmen in THIS neighborhood!)

And so, it is my hope that both snowmen and gnome can live happily together in the Magic Cottage...

 

 otherwise, I may be reporting to you from the site of something akin to "civil war!"

I digress...

Here are a few of the crafts I've finished, and a few still in process!

These are little box vignettes created for a few of my special "valentines"!

And these are the gnome tags...in process. Do you know the mental anguish involved in making 40 gnomes? Well let me share a bit of the nightmare with you...first of all, I had no pattern. So as simple as it was for "E" to create her darling gnome guys, I have no mechanical fortitude whatsoever...so a gnome without a pattern was NOT gonna happen. SOooooooooooooo...

 

I have a dear friend who owns a Cricut die cutting machine. I've never been terribly impressed with them, and figure I wouldn't need one since I don't usually make things en masse. However, I am convinced that the machine was made for these very things...tedious projects involving the same kind of embellishments in great numbers. SO.....

 

Having already cut each tag individually out of chipboard, and punched each hole and papered and inked each tag, I had already invested dozens of "man hours" (LOL) in making said tags...more than I intended. And so I enlisted the help of my dear friend and asked her to bring her Cricut and we'd cut out 40 gnomes. What?! What do you MEAN it's not that simple????

 

WELL, much to my dismay, there is no gnome template in all of Cricut's many templates...which meant, we were going to have to get creative about the way we  think about this. Okay, let's break it down then, we need 1 circle (for the head) two hands, two feet, a beard, a tunic, a hat. Easy enough...let's start cranking these babies out! NOT SO FAST....there's the little matter of finding and choosing the RIGHT tunic and the RIGHT hat...and there is NO beard. None. WHAT?!?! No beard? How can that be? Even in the nativity template there was no beard...however, there was this tunic...and so we chose. Nativity tunic it is. AND, rather than create each piece of the body separately, there is a template for paperdolls. Head, hands and feet included! WOOT! SOMETHING made easier and not more difficult! HOORAY! However the expression on the paperdoll is very childlike, not old and wise like gnomes truly are. Well, we just HAVE to have beards...even if I have to cut each one out by hand...that's all there is to it...

So I started perusing the templates and looked for anything round with a scalloped edge...wait, what's that? hmmmm...an apron. The bottom of the apron is scalloped...I could just cut off the top half! This just might work!

And so we cut one...tried it on for size...voila! Our gnomes have beards! And while I had to cut each one to fit, it wasn't nearly as tedious as it would have been to cut out each little scallop individually. Now they need eyes and a grin that's a little mischievous but friendly and wise. And there it is! The gnome personality shining through!

And so I have made each of you, dear readers who will send me your snail mail addy, a little gnome tag to remember forever our trip into the gnome world together!

Chunky Valentine book to come! Hugs!

Paula Clalre