A Nature Shelf! {week 4, December 2012}

The last Nature Shelf post of the year!

It wasn't until I put this final Shelf together that it struck me that these three Gnomes look like the Three Kings too! I love the serendipity!


What are doing this week to bring a little bit of Nature into your home? Feel free to share; I'd love to hear from you!

A Nature Shelf! {week 4, November 2012}

The last week in November!

We added some sweet autumnal Gnomes to this week's Shelf, keeping our Fairy Turkey company.

What are you doing to bring nature or the seasons into your home? I'd love to hear from you; feel free to share!

An Autumnal Tableau

For special occasions I like to set up little displays for the family to discover, or as my 4 year old son exclaims, "Look what the gnomes have been doing!"

 

For the Autumnal Equinox over the weekend, I made these wool felted acorns and Fall Gnomes. The gnomes were just so easy to make, I really think my four year old could make one - and don't they look sweet?! I found the directions for these over here at the Carrie Logic website - check them out :-)

The acorns were another sweet and easy project. I collected little acorn caps while we were out on our walks (honestly, I think I collected dozens and dozens of them ... and now I'm dreaming up all of the fun things we can do with the ones I have left over after this project!)

To make the little hanging acorns, I started out with a little tuft of wool roving. (This is carded wool; I get mine from Sage Dream Design). I measured out my tuft to be about as long as my pinky finger!

Wrap it around your pinky finger.

Then carefully slide it off, and begin to gentle prick it with your felting needle. (A felting needle is a super-duper sharp needle, with little barbed hooks. These tangle the wool when it is pricked, and make the wool more dense, and matted. Felting needles are SHARP ... please use carefully!)

Start gently pricking all over with your needle, while keeping your little ball in a somewhat spherical shape.

Keep pricking, as it becomes denser and tighter. See the difference between the picture above and the picture below?

I made five little wool roving balls. (There are five of us in the family, so I made five acorns!)

Then I matched up wool balls to acorn caps.

I used my (new) hot glue gun to glue the wool roving ball into the acorn cap (no action shots ... I'm still learning how to use a hot glue gun, and am not feeling comfortable enough to mutli task with it).

 

 I cut five shortish lengths of ribbon (about two inches), and glued them into a loop.

Finally, I glued a little ribbon loop onto the top of each acorn.

And there you go! So simple :-)

A Nature Shelf! {week 4, September 2012}

I'm a little in love with the additions to this week's Nature Shelf!

For the forth week in the nature table monthly cycle, we're adding a human element ... which in our case usually means gnomes or pixies or fairies. Because that's just the way we roll around here!

The two little wooden figures made their way to the Nature Shelf a couple of days ago, but I made the little nut cap man last week and tucked him onto the shelf last night; he was just so wonderfully easy to make too! His body is a pipe cleaner, with a wooden bead head and then a simple little felt tunic and an acorn top hat ... and he's just the right size too! So sweet!

I think we'll be seeing more of these little pipecleaner bendy men in the future!

A Nature Shelf! {September 2012, week 2}

My little Nature Shelf is taking shape!

In the Waldorf tradition, your Nature Table should reflect the seasonal changes in your natural environment. For us here in Virginia, that means the first inklings of Fall are in the air.

The Nature Table is changed each month, with little additions made each week.

In week 1, along with your basics (home dyed playsilks and, for me, a gingerbread (gnome!) house we made a couple of months ago) you add items from the mineral world. I used some tumbled Crystals.

For week 2, you would add items to reflect the plant, and natural world. I added a blue playsilk and some pinecones and seed pods that we've collected on recent walks.

Next week, for week 3, I'll be adding a representative from the animal world.

And for the fourth week of the month, something from the human, or magical world (I like to add gnomes!)

But, really, my favorite part of the Nature Shelf is making the small changes and additions for the week, and then letting my four year old, The Little Guy, discover it. "Oh - look, Mama! Look what the gnomes did to the Nature Shelf!" Truly, it is the stuff that childhood dreams and flights of fancy are made of!

I'll be posting updates of our Nature Shelves ... I can't wait to see what the gnomes do next ;-)