How To… Make (more) Christmas Elves

Hello! Welcome back to this week’s How To… and this week we have even MORE Christmas Elves. I just couldn’t resist. The basic elf is the same as the ones I showed you a couple of weeks ago, but your materials are slightly different.

This time instead of gumnuts and pine cones I used the “Japanes Lantern” fruit from the Physalis plant. It is a beauftiful beautiful orange and really reminds me of Autumn.

Physalis  are a typical Autumn plant and I have seen them in a number of front gardens (I believe they may even be a weed!). They are delicate and yet strangely sturdy. And make a wonderful Autumn or Christmas craft material.

Materials: Felt, a little wool (unravelled), wooden bead, “lampionblume” (Physalis plant), ribbon, paint & brush, hot glue gun or wood glue.

1) Cut out your felt pieces. For the long pointy hat, you need a long triangle. The two long sides of mine are approx 7cm long. For the green collar, I cut a circle. Then made 8 cuts into and cut out 8 point “leaves”.

2) Unravelled you wool and take about 8 strands. With the hot glue gun, glue your hat and ribbon together and then add your “hair”. Before I glued the hair in place, I check against the wooden bead how it would look the nicests.

3) Assemble all your pieces and glue them in place with the hot glue gun – i.e. wooden bead to hair and hat, green collar to wooden bead, physalis to green collar.

4) Paint your face. I used acrylics, as they do not run into the grain of the wood.

Finished! I love them!!!

These little Christmas Elves sure will stand out on the Christmas Tree!