Storybook Characters

I have started work on this year's ornaments.  Well... maybe not physically working on them.  I have ideas of what I want to do, and I'm doing the research to see how feasible my ideas are.  As usual, I can't post too much about what I'm working on, since I don't want my recipients to know what they're getting.  So I figured I'd display some of my past ornaments.

I am struggling over what to make my nephew this year.  He is currently fixated with Mario Kart, but he got an ornament based on that last year, so it's time to move on to something else.

His Christmas ornaments are mostly based on storybook characters.  They dovetailed nicely with the set of fantasy characters I made for my sister.  I have been trying to stick with that goal, but I suspect I'll deviate from it more and more as he gets older.

It's quite a collection so far.  It started with the cat and the fiddle, and the cow jumping over the moon.  I stayed with nursery rhymes the following year and made the owl and the pussy cat in their pea-green boat.  It was a tricky ornament for such a simple concept.  I had a hard time balancing the boat.

The following Christmas I wandered away from nursery rhymes and created a 3D rocking horse.  So fun to make.  I've done several of them, and have enjoyed them all.  In 2007 I decided to branch into fairy tales and made Aladdin with his magic lamp.

Next was Jack and the beanstalk, complete with the goose and golden eggs.  In 2009 I fixated upon Rub-a-dub-dub and stuffed three little men in a tub.  That was such a fun ornament to make!  The tub took some work, and certainly doesn't look very watertight.  I had it all ready to bake, but needed a way to string it so the ornament would hang straight.  I ended up poking little holes in the bottom of the tub and through three of the planks so I could thread the string through it.  I wish I had thought of that when I made my pea-pod boat!  It was very easy to get the tub to hang straight and I knew it was well supported.

There are so many stories and fairy tales I could pick from for this year's ornament.  I may have to plunk down in the children's section of the library and start paging through books to see what grabs me and the imagination of an eight year old boy.