Nikolaus and "Engel & Bergmann"

After the 1st Sunday of Advent, the next "big" event is St Nicolaus day, Nikolaustag here in Germany. In the evening of the 5th of December, children are supposed to clean their shoes and set them up for St Nicolas to come by and drop a present. That is, if the children have been good ;)

The Kindergarten asked for adult sized socks. So I decorated an old pair :)

And at home we all cleaned our shoes

 The children went in bed pretty quickly and on the next morning the first words we got from our 3,5yo daughter, N. was: "was he there?" - at 7h it took me a little while to understand what she meant. But then she managed to get us out of bed to check on our shoes!

 We had two happy bunnies jumping around in the flat for a while ;)

Now I'd like to talk about the two characters that you see standing. The Angel and the Miner (Engel und Bergmann). They are traditional characters around here, from the region called "Erzgebirge". You can easily find out more about them online.

I was given the two plain wooden figures by my father-in-law. Either he or his father had made them but never go round to do anything further with them. After he gave them to me, it took me just a few days to decide what to do with them. I decided I wanted to paint them extremely carefully and give my daughter the angel and my son the miner. They are allowed to handle them, to play with them, to move them where ever they please in the flat. 

I first painted them completely white before getting on with other colours.

The angel's wings are made of felt and glued at the back. I wanted golden shiny thread but did not find any at the time, so I used a sort of yellowish-brown which does remind the golden paint.

I now have put on my wish-list of handicraft tools to acquire, a set of tiny paint brushes. I need brushes fit for miniature. The details were very challenging to paint with normal brushes and I don't really want to do that again.
The belts are made of ribbons, the rest is painted. Then I put a coat of varnish to make the figures shiny and after they were dry, I hid them away for St Nicolas to bring them to the children on the 6th of december ;)