A Dickens Village

Every year for many years my mother gave me a Dickens Village house from Studio 52. These ceramic houses represent the Dickens A Christmas Story and are one of my many Christmas treasures.  Every year I spend hours putting up my village and then taking it down again after New Years.  Last year I decided to not take it down until spring so I could enjoy it longer.  This year, with everyone coming to the house for Thanksgiving and not for Christmas, I decided to put it up in November.  Here are a couple of ‘after’ pictures. and yes, one of the houses is a bit worse for wear.  It had a crash a couple of years ago and I spent many hours gluing it back together, but it is noticibly cracked.  I should have put it on the back row but by the time I picked it up to place, the back row was already full and set up.

I said those were the after pictures.  Well, the reason there were after pictures was this.  I decided this year to us all LED lightbulbs inside the houses.  I actually use a Christmas light string with the big bulbs to light them up and the hot old fashoned incandescent bulbs are a fire hazzard around the snow.  So I thought cool to the touch LED lights would be perfect.  I can leave them on all the time and not worry or have to reach up and over and behind stuff to turn it on and off every day.  One problem. They glow blue. You know what I mean, a very stark blue-white light.  I had everything all together and when I stepped back to admire, it was glaring.  Certainly not the soft yellow candlelight glow that Dickens used to write his story.  Hmm, how to fix this.

A before picture

Stampin’ Up! to the rescue.  I used coffee filters torn in pieces and stamped Crushed curry ink on them.  Then I added a bit of snail and wrapped them around the light bulbs to soften the light.  Remember these are cool lights so no worries about the paper getting hot and catching fire.  Stand back and admire.  Yup, just enough difference that it doesn’t look like something from a Sy-Fy movie.  Thanks Stampin Up.

I think I’ll leave this up until April!

Thanks for stopping by my blog today.  Have a great weekend.

Lynn