If I was the apologising sort I would apologising for the long delay in posting, but once you see what I’ve been working on, I am sure you will understand.

This year I decided to give the old nativity scene an RNZ twist. It truly is incredible what you can do with some toilet roll inners, scrap coloured card, some filling from cushions, and your imagination.(As if anyone needs cushions at reception anyway, they’re only there for five minutes).

Let’s see if you can guess who is playing who.

Who’s that cheeky shepherd!?

The three wise monarchs (NOTE: not all Kings).

Imagine the discussions these two have while watching their flocks by night, all seated on the ground.

Well, Merry Christmas everybody. I’m off on a well deserved break and am going to put a stop to the blogging, perhaps permanently. A chap has many responsibilities, and it’s all too easy to get distracted by the lure of fame and fortune on the internet, all for the possibility of making the front page of a well known “news” website once again.

Have a great holiday and here’s to 2010.

As it’s getting to be that busy time of year, today I thought we’d look at something that’s fairly straightforward and quick to make: Magic Eyes.

They’re also known as Ojo De Dios or “Eye of God”, if you want to get fancy about it, but to be honest I don’t like to call them that as it reminds me too much of the all - seeing Mary, and if there’s one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that she’s the last person whose penetrating stare you want following you around whatever room you choose to hang these in.

I find these a good little project to work on whilst I have to do something else, and once you’ve got three or four of them on the go, it’s easy to put one in your pocket and take it with you so you’ve got something to occupy yourself, for example, whilst on you are on the No. 11 bus.

I’ve finished about 38 of these now, and I’ve started to string them together and hang them between the kitchen and the lounge as a bit of a unusual room divider.

What you’ll need:

Two clean iceblock sticks (I find old Bubble O’ Bill ones work particularly well)

Wool/Cord/Leather thonging of various colours (good way to use up some of those scraps) - basically anything that can be wound.

Instructions

1. Make a cross with the two sticks.

2. Holding the sticks firmly together, wind your first colour choice tightly around them at the same intersection, about four times. Then wind the wool around the same intersection, but over the other two sticks in the opposite direction.

3. Once you feel the sticks aren’t going anywhere, take the wool of your choice and start to wind it around one stick, carry it over to the next stick and wind around in the same direction until you have gone around the four sticks.

4. Continue the same procedure until you are ready for your next colour. Tie this next colour to your first colour and work in the same manner until most of the stick is covered.

5. To finish the ends you can glue on home-made tassels or pom poms - or a combination of both as seen here, or paint the end of the sticks in a complementary colour.

Couldn’t be simpler, could it.

EDIT: Appropriately, this photo courtesy of Father John - we made these together when on a retreat earlier this year.

Finally, it seems my post about the Petone Vinnie’s shop has attracted a lot of questions. Bev will be pleased, she’s always complaining that the Sallies, what with their eft-pos machine and specially printed price tags, are always getting more attention than them, so I’ll let her know that clearly Vinnie’s does have a loyal following after all.

An exciting day at the Petone St. Vincent de Pauls. Bev, who works there on Wednesday mornings, set this (above) aside for me when it came in last week. I go there every week or so as they have a good stock of zips, remnants and old lace.

I’ve gotten to know Bev -  who’s not a bad old stick despite being the Ohariu party president for big Win’s party -  pretty well over the last year or so. She always pretends to be surprised that a “strapping lad” like myself would be interested in crafts. I tell her “Bev, it’s the 21st century. Gender roles are so 1970s”. Then we have a laugh and carry on our respective ways.

As you may be aware, it’s been belt tightening season here at RNZ. We’ve all been asked for our thoughts on how to make the money go further (or at least have enough so we can stop “letting people go”), so when big PC asked for ideas about how we could save on the traditional Christmas spend up, I knew exactly what to suggest - we could make these little angels and glue them to cards instead of spending thousands of dollars on some sort of anonymous card that will only be thrown away as soon as it’s received.

Unfortunately that was another idea of mine that was given the thumbs down, although I thought it would have also doubled as a handy staff “development” session.

(EDIT: Thanks to Squidoo for the image - Wayne still hasn’t replaced my camera, (see below), now claims I pushed him in a rush for the garlic naan!)

Probably for the best though, the last time we had a staff bonding session we went to one of those decorate-your-own-plate/mug places. Jack Perkins got quite snippy when I pointed out that he needed to wait for one colour to dry before he tried to put on another, Lloyd was more interested in painting the Led Zep logo everywhere instead after he said the RNZ one was “too hard” and Bryan didn’t even finish his mug, claiming he was late for his shift selling Christmas trees at the Aro Valley Community Centre. A convenient excuse.

Anyway, this week’s activity is a little bit fiddly, but now that you’ve had a week of building pasta trains you should be well versed in how to work with this most versatile of materials.

Pasta Angels

What you’ll need:

• Elbow macaroni
• Bowtie pasta
• Rigatoni
• Gold pipe cleaners
• White and gold paint
• Medium round wooden balls
• Hot glue gun
• Paintbrush
• Glitter (optional)
• Vivid/felt pen

Instructions:

1. Paint the elbows and rigatoni white. Paint bowties gold or glittery silver. I usually paint them gold.

2. Cut each gold pipe cleaner into four equal parts. make loop and twist ends together, this should look like a halo. Stick twisted ends into the hole at the top of the ball, this should look like the halo over a head.

3. Glue the wings on the rigatoni. Glue two elbows to sides but letting them touch in the front of angel.

4. Put glue on upper mouth of rigatoni (the one closest to the wings) and attach the head.

5. Draw a face on the head.

There you go, an inexpensive way to liven up the studio/office/Christmas tree. You can make these look like your friends and family by adjusting the skin color, hair color, eye color etc. You can even write the name of the person on a piece of leather and glue to the lower part of the angel body. I like to call this one “Kim”.

EDIT: This image by Ani, thanks Ani.

Now, we hear a lot these days from those gluten-intolerant namby-pambys talking about how pasta isn’t any good, but I say they don’t know what they’re talking about.

I’m fair sweaty under the kilt about all the projects I’ve been working on this week, which is why we’re going to spilt this tutorial into two posts: first, we’ll be looking at all the items you can make from what is a fairly standard cupboard staple, and secondly, I’ll show you how to make some seasonally appropriate decorations.

Pasta dioramas

This one is really only limited by your own creativity. Not surprisingly, I became interested in this when I discovered that Lloyd was using the dead hour between 2.10 and 3.10am to work on his own rather magnificent collection of trains, station houses, and jalopies made of pasta.

Anyway, what you need to do is:

Gather a selection of the following:

- Rotelle (or “wagon wheels” as Geoff will insist on calling them - a little known fact is that he is a big fan of leftover pasta for breakfast, so we have often had discussions on the correct terminology for the varied shapes.)

- Cavatelli (straight tubes)

- Fiori (“little flowers”)

- Lasagne sheets

- Rigatoni

- Hot glue gun (don’t forget to work on old newspaper, the glue is a devil for sticking up the desk and it’s hell to try and adjust the levels with a big glob of glue in the way. Can lead to embarrassing situations.)

Now, use the glue gun to assemble the shapes however you would like in order to make the above mentioned items. I could give you exact instructions, but no doubt it is best if you work it out for yourself. Here is a photo for inspiration:

(That’s a photo of my nephew Sean II in the background. I have to keep him well supervised around my projects, otherwise he tends to smash them because he is a brat of youthful enthusiasm). EDIT: thanks to Meredith for the photo, which was originally posted here.

Don’t forget you can use different flavoured pasta for colour variations, or alternately, use a water-based paint to colour them.

So to speak.

Today we’ll be looking at candle dipping.

So many people say to me, “Sean, as a well paid and high profile morning radio journalist, isn’t it just as easy, if not quicker,for you to just go down to the Red Shed and buy some pre-decorated candles?”

To which I reply:

“You’re missing the bloody point.”

Candle dipping is a venerable old craft, dating back to 1487 when Belgium friars discovered that they could create a steady form of light by combining wax and cotton. I’m not about to let that tradition die for the sake of saving three dollars by buying some cheap knock-off imported directly from Taiwan.

Before you start investing in an industrial-grade Dipping Wheel (I’m lucky enough to have one in the garage - Kim organised all the other staff here, at work, to club together and get me one last Christmas), why not try out a mini candle first and see if you have the flair for it?

How to make a mini candle

1. Melt a bar of candle wax in an old pot (I advise not using one you would like to use again) - it needs to have a melting point of at least 60 degrees Celsius

2. Cut a 8cm. length of 12 or 15 ply wick.

3. Using pliers, grip the wick and dip it into the wax, making sure that the wick is evenly coated in wax.

4. Allow the first coat to dry.

5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you have reached your desired diameter.

And remember - hand dipped birthday candles really show how much you care about a person. Why not try personalising them in that special person’s favourite colour?

Make sure to keep checking back at my blog - next time we’ll be looking at decorating with dried pasta.

EDIT: thanks to Mystic Seaport for the picture - I had a rather unfortunate incident with my digital camera back in November when someone who shan’t be named (let’s just say their name starts with Wayne and finishes with Mowat) thought they would borrow it to take photos at the annual RNZ Diwali Party and dropped into a pot of Chicken Madras on a bain marie.

Hi, and welcome to the first post of my new blog.

I’ll get straight to the point.

As some of you may know, recently my “employers” at Radio NZ decided that I would not be permitted to write a column in well-known Auckland based magazine.

However, I’m not one to let the bastards keep me down.

Hence this blog.

Now that I have so much time in the day - after all, I do finish work at 9am, 9.15am at the latest if Kathryn is late in (like she so often has been this winter) - I’ve found that there’s nothing better to fill the day with than using my hands to create something.

On this site, I’ll be posting about my favourite crafts, as well as loading tutorials and photos of my latest projects.

You can leave questions in the comments. I will do my utmost to answer them.