Perfect Packaging IV: it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

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So I’ve spent the last two days making more snowmen, with another trip to Aldi and/or Asda to get more socks and lots more rice! It was a bit of a struggle to work out how to package them in their foursomes. Whatever it was needed to keep them clean and dry. It also needed to give them their space and not get crushed. I considered getting bottle crates – the cardboard ones you find at supermarkets, but was concerned at a) buying that many bottles, and b) the ickle snowmen getting lost in the box and bouncing around too much. As I looked round the studio for inspiration, I saw some paper cups I got to mix polyurethane in – and they were the perfect size for the smaller snowmen. Then I spied a large cardboard tube left over from carpet underlay I think – sawn with a bread knife and finished off with a scalpel, the 2 inch rings cup the larger snowmen well. With some cardboard bracing and taping them together, a perfect package was born. Wrapped in a plastic bag (with suitable warning label attached), a quick curling ribbon bow and dangles, 40 snowmen are ready for their forever homes.

Now all I need is a forklift to move the total of 15kg of rice up to the house, and then to the church Christmas Fayre 😉

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Half A Pound of Tuppenny Rice… and a few socks

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I’m still in making mode for the church Christmas Fayre… and inspired by yet another Facebook shared video, I have three snowmen families gracing my studio table, one of which has chosen this as their official Christmas card. Nobody mentioned that sports socks are now rarely just white, seemingly requiring colour splashes to be able to match them up when mixed in the gym bag. Good old George at Asda came up trumps though 🙂

And prices have gone up since rice was tuppenny… with each family weighing in at 1333g of Basics rice, that’s more like 3lbs of rice for £1. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

And the pompoms, despite a wonderful gizmo to help, still took an hour to make and sew on. I think it was worth it though for the finishing sparkling touch.

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