He Built Himself a Nest Egg

My local stamp group had our Christmas get-together last Sunday - we always schedule after the busy holidays. We had drawn names earlier in the year and exchanged gifts. The only requirement was they had to be handmade.

This is the assemblage I made for Trisha. Her list of favorite things included birds and nests, so I went with that theme. The bird, lower nest and most of the background were part of a beautiful napkin I found. The bits of bark and little acorn are pieces I found in the yard. The "branch" is actually the stem left over after I cut the silk flowers from it to use in another project. I had thrown it away, but retrieved it when I glanced down and saw how much it looked like a tree branch! The egg in the lower left is a wooden egg half which I gold-leafed. I love these wooden assemblage boxes that my friend, Gloria Hanes, sells in her etsy shop here. They are beautifully handmade by her father and very reasonably priced.

The gift I received was from Christine. She made these darling "candle lampshades" that fit over a wine glass with a votive candle or battery-operated votive light. There are two wine glasses with shades for each of the four seasons - a total of eight shades.

These shades are both stamped on heavy vellum with the designs pierced so that the light shines through. On the left is summer; the one on the right is winter.

These are the shades for fall and spring. The jack-o-lantern shade is three layers - black, orange and vellum. You can see how the light flickers through the face in the closeup. Spring is made from a pastel patterned butterfly vellum which can be seen better in the closeup. These look so cute on my kitchen bar!