December!

I know, I haven’t blogged for ages, but November passed by in a flash!

This past month consisted of hot sunny days mixed together with a whole lot of school exams, a splash of school Christmas market day, and a good dollop of everyday life. Finished off beautifully with the thought that Reece’s school is now finally closed for the year and Shannon doesn’t have to go, except to get her report card next week.

In between the monotony of helping the kids studying for their exams, I also got to be a little creative! After the exams, Reece had a market day at school where they have to sell goodies – preferably with a Christmas theme.

Reece was (naturally) more interested in how much money he would make. I was all for the ‘making’ but not in his definition of ‘making’ - I saw it rather as an opportunity to be creative!

So here’s what I made:

Reindeer Lollipops

These turned out so well that I want to share how I made them:

Shopping list:

• lollipops (Fizz Pops) for the reindeers.
• brown paper
• raffia, string or ribbon
• wiggly eyes
• mini red pompoms
• darker brown cardstock for antlers

How to:

1. Cut squares of brown paper – big enough to cover a lollipop. (I’d say around 10-12cm square/ 4 inches square). I couldn’t find brown paper, so I had some brown paper packets lying around and used those.
2. Cover each lollipop in brown paper and tie at the base of the sucker with raffia.
3. Glue on the nose and eyes – I like to glue these all close together as it gives the reindeer a cute expression.
4. Cut out and glue on the antlers** 

Done!

Note: You can always draw on eyes and a nose with pens or paint if you don’t have wiggly eyes or pompoms. My pompoms were part of a package in a rainbow of colours- I just picked out all the red ones.

** I used a Silhouette die cut for the antlers from this cute Reindeer treat box from Pebbles in my Pocket , but you could easily draw similar ones out onto cardstock and cut them out by hand. They are about 1 1/2 inches high. You glue them on slightly to the back of the lollipop ‘head’ – almost like a headband.

I selected just the antlers and copied as many as I could onto an A4 sheet and cut them with my Silhouette.

How to separate the antlers from the treat box design:

Select the whole design, then click on “Object”, then select “ungroup”, then delete each of the other pieces of the design except the antlers. Move the image to the top left corner, then duplicate the antlers in rows.

PS: I’m certainly no expert at the Silhouette software, I just plod along on my own, occasionally using the ‘Help’ function and eventually figure it all out.

 

I’ll be back tomorrow with the recipe for making “North Pole Snow” which the kids could dunk their reindeer lollipops in. There’s also a free printable label…..