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Heirlooms to treasure, or just plain creative family fun — either way, there’s a special magic to Christmas decorations that you make yourself at home, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Here’s a round-up of patterns and how-to tutorials for frugal holiday decorations that you can make yourself:

Cardboard, glue, tiny pine cones, and scraps of birchbark — topped off with a sprinkle of glitter, the only special craft item you’ll need to do this — create a rustic miniature Christmas village! Kristin Nicholas –”Getting Stitched on the Farm” — gives a clear step-by-step tutorial for making your own.

Snuggle the houses on a landscape of poly fibrefill or quilt batting snow, if you’ve got some on hand, or just drape a white cloth over crumbled balls of newspaper to make a winter landscape to showcase the minature village.
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Kay's Tiny Felted K9s

Kay's Tiny Felted K9s

Kay Turple is a Canadian artist who makes amazing 3-dimensional dog portraits — all sorts of dog breeds, like this gorgeous fluffy Old English Sheepdog — working from your photographs to make a tiny true-to-life model in felted wool. How does Kay make her miniature pets? She gives an overview of the needle felting technique [...]

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MOMA Whimsy

MOMA Whimsy

You’d think that the Museum of Modern Art’s online shop (MOMA) would be all tasteful leather desk accessories and reprints of Old Masters, right? Not so! Clockwise from top left: Curved glasses in a rainbow of colours. Maybe not the best thing for your restorative orange juice on New Year’s Day morning, but a cheery [...]

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Miniature Trees in Spookytown

Miniature Trees in Spookytown

I’ve got to confess to having a weakness for Spookytown miniatures — well, anything miniature, if it comes to that — ever since I read Piers Anthony’s now-classic fantasy On a Pale Horse (part of his Incarnations of Immortality series), and then spotted the “Death On A Pale Horse” figurine in that really good Toronto [...]

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Furniture Follies

Furniture Follies

For a drop-dead-gorgeous family room, there’s any number of ways a spendy type could drop a few thousand without pausing for coffee… You could splash out on a flat-screen TV, for example, and pretend it’s modern wall art. Or… you could tuck that traditional chunky-style TV set away in an amazing beech and mahogany cabinet [...]

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