Christmas Decorating (quilting distraction)

The day after Thanksgiving, I started dragging the Christmas decorations out of the little eve storage areas in my quilting room. It really didn't take that long since I'm not an overboard Christmas decorator. Since we didn't decorate at all last year because of the move, I felt the need to get them up as soon as possible.

The two Santa's above were made by my DD and I in the late 90's, when we were living in Waterford. Waterford is a small town in southeast Wisconsin and like a lot of small towns the shops in its little downtown areas was continually cycling through different proprietors and contents. In the late 90's, one of the larger store fronts contained a combination pet store and ceramic shop. They poured slip into their own molds and had an area in the back of the pet store/ceramic shop where you could prepare your purchased green ware for firing and painting or glazing and firing.



The Santa on the right was done by my DD and mine is on the left.



Being that they are tall and rather light weight, they are also very unstable and prone to tipping over...which they have done several times and sustained varying degrees of damage. My Santa broken in half in one fall (you may be able to see a crack running thru his star if you enlarge picture) and DD's Santa has had his bottom quarter pieced back together (minus a few chips of plaster..see darker spots of red).

I've always tried to keep them out of harms way (pets, small children, a breeze) and even used Gorilla Grip, that securing putty.


This year, while I was dragging out the decorations, and idea came to me as I was taking these guys out of their bubble wrap....they need a stand. Downstairs I went, with Santa's in hand, to find Sweetie and explain his next project. It became our next project.

Out came the left over wood from the lazy susan (more on that in another post) and we marked the oval the size that I wanted. Sweetie then cut it out, sanded the cut sides, and then routed the decorative edge. I sanded it, put on stain, and three coats of poly (with sanding in between the first two coats). The next morning, I used a little steel wool on the 3rd coat and finished it off with a coat of butchers wax. It's not one of my more stellar finishing jobs...but it still looks pretty good and is exactly what I envisioned.