Getting ready for the 5 th of december.

Here is Saint Nicolaas at work in his office. For hundreds of years he has celebrated his birthday december 5th by giving presents to all children big and small who have been good all year.

Presents are delivered into shoes that children put near the chimney at night. They  put carrots and hay in the shoes for Saint Nic's horse.

In his little office here you see him writing in his famous red book which holds all the names  and if they have been good or not and what presents they would like to get.

He is surrounded by gifts ready to be wrapped and traditional treats like chocolate letters, chocolate images of himself, different kinds of cookies and toys.

The paintings on  the wall show him and his helper Peter at work.

The scene is inside a little red book to match Saint Nic's book . The furniture is 48th scale . Saint Nic is a plastic doll but I just  had to use him because he has such a sweet face and really looks like  a Saint, does not he ?


I hope he will like it too and bring me some extra chocolates .

I

 I am adding some hints and tips on how to make this scene  and the items s in it.
The pictures on the  walls are pictures of Saint Nic at work.

I made this pictures a little more interesting by doing them in a 3 D technique.
For this  you will  need 3 prints of the picture  you are going to use.

If you use  pictures you download and print from the net, it is a good idea to paint them with Mod Podge or varnish so the colors will not disappear or smudge when you work with them.

One picture is going to be the background of your picture.

 Now you will have to take a good look at the picture and decide which parts you would like to stand out more. In this picture you will notice that Saint Nick and his helper  are  in  front of the  shop as  well as  the kids on the right. They are the parts we want to stand out more.

  So cut out the Saint Nic  part of the picture like I did , shown at the top left. Then cut out the same part of the picture like the one  at the top on the right. You will notice the background and the pavement have now gone.  The part with the kids gets the same treatment. First you cut out the Shop window and
all the kids in one piece. From the next picture you only cut out the boy in the yellow coat. You will see those pics on the right.

Now you will need some double sided foam tape. Cut some very small pieces of foam tape and glue them to the backs of the  cut outs.

Remove the backing paper and first stick the ones that have the background on them to the picture at the matching spot in the background picture.  Make sure there is no foam showing ! Then glue the second set of cut outs ( those with no background) on top of the ones you did before.
You will be amazed by  the amount of depth this adds to your picture.

If you want to add extra effect you can varnish the whole picture or paint it with Mod Podge Dimensional magic.

Of Course you can use any picture you like to try this treatment  and create a 3D picture in miniature.

The chocolate letters ( you get your initial as a gift) are made using alphabet pasta and brown paint. The chocolate Saint Nic figures were made in the  3 D technique using  2 photos  of the real thing sandwiched together with foam tape.

The wrapping paper I found on the internet.