The Twelve Days of Christmas, part III

(go read parts I and II!)

So by now, the total figurine count is up to: 8 trees, 14 turtledoves, 18 hens, 20 calling birds, 20 golden rings, 18 geese, 14 swans, and 8 maids. I will be finding little bits of clay in my room for the next several months, I am sure.

Just for a little scale, the figurines in today's post all are pretty much between one and one and a half inches tall.

Nine Ladies Dancing

The calling birds are cute, true, and the turtledoves are pretty nice as well, but...the ladies dancing are my favorite. I'm sort of proud of how they turned out. The one in the back left here seems to be really grooving.

Coincidentally, they seem to be tied with the geese for Dinah's favorite as well.

Ten Lords a-leaping

If the ladies dancing are my favorite, well...the lords leaping are my least favorite. They were very frustrating, and the one component of the gift I struggled with the most. Eventually they ended up looking like some guys in red walking around. This one has no left arm, but that's the cat's fault.

Eleven Pipers Piping

Here's a piper. If I had been less of a procrastinator, I would have tried to give them little painted belts and stripes down their pants. However, I was a bit cramped for time on this gift. If you're nitpicking, the flute or pipe or whatever is probably a little large, but - hey. Cut me some slack.

Twelve Drummers Drumming

Yup, they have different drums.

Here's a sad story about the drummers - they were created the second night I was working on this project, and I had dreams about painting the UW marching band uniforms on them. However, at about 3:30 in the morning I pulled them out of the oven, where they had gone in looking like this:

Hey, those legs look different, right?

Right. The black clay I originally used just melted in the oven. When I checked on the drummers, I found 12 sad drummers' torsos sitting in melted puddles of legs. I was too stunned/exhausted to do anything but climb upstairs to bed, heartbroken.

Finally, I just fashioned brown legs for them and glued the legs and torsos together. If they hadn't melted, the drummers might have won the title of "favorite figurine" from the dancing ladies...but alas.


So ends a too-long saga of a ridiculous Christmas gift. The entire collection of figurines fills a shoebox - here are some pictures of the last 3 days of figurines.