The Craftiest Workshop

I am sure that if you have been reading my blog for awhile, you are aware that I like gnomes. They give me a warm whimsical feeling every time I see one.

A couple years ago when I was wood burning gnomes on wood slices, I challenged my brother Russell to paint a gnome. He accepted the challenge and has been creating gnomes at Christmas for the last few years. These are his gnomes for this year that he posted on Facebook a couple days ago.

You should check out his Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/russellthomasart

and their website: https://www.birdsongstudios.ca

As usual, I too have made a few gnomes this year.

The first one came from the necessity to trim our evergreen trees in the fall/early winter. The lower branches make it difficult to get the mower under and some dying branches just need to be removed. On Thursday I trudged through knee deep snow around our yard pulling branches out from under the snow and sawing them off. I had taken a tomato cage out of the greenhouse with this project in mind. I am glad I did as there is three feet of drifted snow blocking the door now.

I bought some floral wire at Dollarama to use to attach the branches to the tomato cage. With the snowbank as my work table, I managed to get branches all the way around the cage. A styrofoam ball inside a cut off nylon knee high for the nose and an old tree skirt for the hat.

The wind in the night knocked it over and the hat had come off. I added a few heavy wood blocks on the base of the cage and used clothes pins to attach the “hat” to one of the rings of the cage. We’ll have to wait and see if it holds up in the next blizzard.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my yarn trees reminded me of gnome hats. I made a yarn chain in red yarn and fashioned it into the tree/hat shape. I tied pieces of white yarn all along the bottom edge then took each of those strands and unwound them separating each into four strands. This created a curly hair look. A wooden bead for the nose and he was all done. I like how you can see the Christmas light through the beard.

My last gnome creations were also made with yarn. A few years ago I had made all these yarn hats for a preschool lesson. I decided to repurpose a few of them into gnomes.

I had done a post about the hats at that time.

Make Yourself some Yarn Hats

The beard idea came from watching a video on YouTube.

She actually takes you through the whole process of making the gnome.

Here is my summary of how to make the beard.

1. Wrap around a large paperback (I used a piece of wood) 45 times with cheaper thin yarn
2. Remove the yarn from the book carefully and lay on top on another piece of yarn. Tie in the center.
3. Cut the loops on either end of the bow tie and shape into a beard shape
4. Stuff the hat with a kleenex and get ready to attach the beard
5. Thread a looped ribbon, string or more yarn through the Kleenex and hat. The knot has to be quite big so that it doesn’t just pull through
6. Hot glue the beard to the hat. Use lots of glue.
7. Hot glue on a wooden bead for the nose

Here are the five I did yesterday using the varigated yarn hats I had already made.
I used different beads for each one.

I may work on one more gnome project before the new year. I want to follow my brother’s idea of creating a gnome painting. I have sketched out a few ideas and am excited to try it. My painting will have to wait until I am done the crafting projects I am working on as gifts for this Christmas.