3D Printed Dickens Village Accessories

JC has been printing little accessory pieces for our Dept. 56 Dickens Christmas Village.

3D printed fountain

3D printed dogs and cat next to my watch for scale

3d printed dogs and cats for Dickens Village 

I can't wait to paint them. Although, they are so tiny, and I am so fidgety fingers. I'll do my best. The standing dog will be painted to look like our dog, Mollie, a beautiful brindle.

Thanks for visiting!

🐶

{All 3D printing design files found on Thingiverse.com}

A Haunted Halloween at Colonial Williamsburg

Haunting on DoG Street (Duke of Gloucester) is in full effect at Colonial Williamsburg through the 31st.  I took a stroll through the streets before opening hours this morning. 

Boy was it spooky. I hope I can sleep tonight.

Have a look for yourself....if you dare.

☠

Thanks for visiting.

👻

Mornings in Colonial Williamsburg

If I didn't have to get up at the crack of dawn, I would miss all these morning views. 

 The Geddy House (below) recently received a new paint job. I love the light shining on the siding.  

Thank you for visiting. 

👑

Halloween Decorating Inside and Out

I hate the weather getting cold, but I love that it brings my favorite holidays. So, it's a trade off. 

I'm a minimalist for Halloween. (just wait for Christmas, though.)

The skeleton votive holders are 3D printed, and painted with acrylic paints. 

And then, of course, we have to have JC's legos. 

OH, and what's Halloween without a dog walking a skeleton dog?

I wonder if we'll ever have too many holiday inflatables? 

We just picked up this spider from Aldi last week. I love Aldi.

These are my favorite inflatables. Three pooches who are out trick or treating. Along with my ghosts and pumpkins handmade by myself and my Dad. I blogged about them last year. 

Sadly, just yesterday, the fan failed on the pooches. JC researched new fans online, and found them to be in the $35 range, but then someone commented that for much less than that you could buy some other inflatable that you don't like and take the fan out of that! Aldi, here we come to pick up another $9.99 inflatable to sacrifice for my pooches. 

Thanks for visiting!

🐶

Mornings at Colonial Williamsburg

Today was a beautiful morning at Colonial Williamsburg.
The light was amazing, and I felt like I was in a fairytale.
Does anyone else ever feel like they can't handle all the beauty?
I don't know how to explain it. It was so pretty that it hurt.

These photos were taken around the George Wythe House.

Thank you for visiting. 

🌳

More 3D Printing and Halloween Paper Crafts

I've been busy. JC keeps printing, and I keep painting and paper crafting. 

3D printed spider:

Nightmare Before Christmas Bats, Jack Skellington, and Sally cut on my Silhouette Cameo. 

My plan is to make a mobile with them:

So much stuff to finish painting here; 3D Groot, Dalek sitting on a 3D column, a water tower, a bunny, coffins and mummies. Yes, all this stuff is 3D printed, except for the paper bats, which are painted cardstock. 

USS Enterprise, Next Generation model:

whew.

Thanks for visiting!

👽

[All 3D print designs found on thingiverse.com]

Hurricane Michael Spared Us.

We lost power Thursday night during the hurricane. Thankfully, power is all we lost. And also, thankfully, we have a generator to keep our refrigerator going. Power came back around 8pm Saturday evening, and I feel very fortunate.  

Friday night is pizza night, so JC took the pizza stone out of the oven and we had grilled pizza. Saturday night we had grilled chicken and roasted onion and potatoes by candlelight. 

                    

  

I pray to Mother Nature we never have to experience the loss and devastation Florida experienced. My heart breaks for them.

 Thanks for visiting.

💟

3D Halloween Printing Fun!

JC has been getting into the season of Halloween. 

He's dusted off the 3D printer and given me a lot of work to do painting things. 

These are magic pumpkins, before being painted. 

See the magic? When you put a light inside, a jackolantern face glows.

Below is a short video of a skeleton in the process of being printed.

 Pumpkins are all painted. Now to paint the skeleton votive holder. 

Looking spooky!

Below is a skull JC printed last year, which I just got around to painting. I did it in phases, and I just told him with this last shot, that this skull is getting scarier and scarier. I think that means I'm done with him. Pretty soon I won't be able to be in the same room with it.

I think my favorite is the coffin and mummy. 

I have yet to paint them.

Next to a cap for scale. I love miniatures, maybe that's why this is my favorite. 

 And here is one of the above pumpkins sitting on top of a lamp to demonstrate the glowing. There was a blip in the printing process, that is why you see the line through his noggin. 

Thanks for visiting!

💀

{All the 3D printing designs were found on www.thingiverse.com}

foobella.blogspot.com

Pete Townshend, The English Beat, and Times When I Love The Internet

Today I was watching this cute little Netflix original movie, 'Like Father' with Kelsey Grammer and Kristen Bell, and during the last scene of the movie, this familiar intro starts to play. I think, ah, 'Save it for Later' by The Beat (or rather The English Beat in the U.S.A.),  and when the singer comes in....wait! That's not the original version. That's Pete Townshend singing! Hmmm! I've never heard this cover, and I love Pete Townshend. How did I miss this back then?

So, I break out the ipad and google "Pete Townshend Save it for Later" and see that he recorded it in 1986, and said it was one of his favorite songs. So, I look it up on YouTube and give it a listen.

Gorgeous cover of a great song. 

So then, I'm sending the video to my husband and telling him about how I heard it in the movie, yadda yadda. Then, I tell him that in the comments of the above video someone mentions how Townshend called up Dave Wakeling back in the 80s, and told him he (Townshend) and David Gilmour (one of my husband's favorite artists) were trying to figure out the chords to 'Save It For Later'.

Not five minutes later, my husband sends me this video, where Dave Wakeling recounts the exact event mentioned above...

...which leads me to this video of Pete Townshend's live performance of the cover, which Dave Wakeling mentions in the video above...

And just to circle back to the beginning, and because we need more good music, here is the original "Save it For Later" video from The Beat. 

I was a child of the 80's and I always talk about how happy I am that I never grew up with the internet or social media. Being a teen was hard enough without it. But what I would give to have had google and YouTube when it comes to music. One of our favorite things to do is sit around and queue up videos on YouTube and play video DJ. We get lost in all the nostalgia of the music we grew up with, and discovering new/old music we missed, just like the above chain of events. This is when I love the internet.

Thanks for visiting!

❤

foobella.blogspot.com

Happy New Year 2018!!

It's time to get accustomed to writing 2018. 

Here is a vintage postcard from a collection my Mother-in-Law gave to me. She used to own an antiques shop, so I am not sure if that is where she received them or not, but most of them are addressed to residents of Newport News, Virginia, where I grew up, and they are from the early 1900's. 

I love vintage ephemera, and wanted to share some with you.  I know people love to use it in art projects, so if you click here it will open in another page where you can download the larger file.

Cheers!

🍸

Dickens Christmas Village and More Christmas Decor 2016

Yes. You read the title correctly. Following are pictures of our Christmas last year, 2016, even though today is the last day of 2017. You see, I failed to post them last year, but after all that time spent taking the pictures and editing them, I didn't want them to go unseen. 

If you know me, you know I love Christmas. So does my husband. One reason I knew he was the man for me was our first year together; the look on his face when I set up my Dickens Christmas village. He loved it, and every year since then we have added to it. 

Dickens Christmas Village 2011

I don't quite know when we will stop adding. I don't want to be the person that lets their village take over an entire room (though I love looking at other people's massive collections)...

...and I have let Christmas take over my whole house. 😆

Colonial Williamsburg Village Dept. 56

Please notice below the two amazing quilted pillows in the chairs, made by my sister for my husband. 

...and Legos. Did I mention how much my husband likes Legos? 

Below is our 2016 Christmas village. 

Notice how much it has grown since the 2011 photo at the top of this post. 

Well, it's even larger this year. Maybe by next year I will post a photo. 

The lace trim on the village's platform was made on a previous Christmas gift, the silhouette cameo. Love that machine. (They are not paying me to say that. I just really do love it.)

The nativity scene below. Figures were bought at Costco years ago, and the stable and manger were made by my talented Dad. 

Can't forget the Christmas dog, Mollie. 

And finally, those precious penguins accompanied by the angel and Christmas trees, made by my Dad, which I posted about here. 

Thank you for visiting, and may your New Year be happy, healthy, peaceful and bright. 

🎉🍸