The Redecemberleying

Fun Fact: last year’s Decemberley is one of my favorite themes. I mean, it keeps things holiday neutral and the name itself is just so much fun.

Funner Fact: beyond snowmen, there really aren’t a lot of wintry Ed Emberley illustrations that are not holidaycentric.

Funnest Fact: this may be our last Decemberley because of the aforementioned lack of wintry illustrations.

Funniest Fact: we’ve already got a game plan for the future. Basically we’ll be celebrating book illustrators during December with Emberley acknowledged as the “founding father.”

Okay, so that last one wasn’t the funniest fact, but I had a thing going. You don’t stop a thing when it’s trying to stick the thing landing.

So what were we to do this year? My team had a really great brainstorming session and figured it out all within a very short period of time.

Jennifer suggested that we do the cotton ball snowflakes in the windows (I think that she and I both had the same image pinned as inspiration. And then she also suggested doing snow globes for each of the seasons. So snow globes in the style of Ed Emberley is what we decided to do.

A few days later Natasia grabbed Jennifer and me to hammer out how exactly to do the four seasons. Then she was like “what if we put animals in scarves and winter hats? Emberley has tons of animals.” And we were like YES.

And as we chatted about how things would look I suddenly had a kinda crazy idea. And because I don’t always know if my crazy ideas are crazy-good or crazy-bad (or crazy-weird), I asked them what they thought of it: What if we made the snow globe in the front door transparent, with just a white outline indicating the globe portion, and then it would be a cool photo op?

And they were like YES (indicating crazy-goodness). And then our Cataloger Jamie chimed in “you should make a little arc of white paper like it’s reflecting light – it’d help indicate it was a globe.” And we were all like YES!!!

And now onto the pictures!

Let me tell you: many kids got so excited when they approached. We heard shouts of “LION!” “GIRAFFES!” etc.

The things many moms have commented on are the cotton ball snowballs.

Natasia strung them, first trying to use white string. She quickly learned: for the love of all that is holy – don’t use white string! It turns out that even looking at it wrong would cause insane tangles.

So we switched to fishing wire. She did a loop of it through the cotton ball which kept them from sliding too easily (they could still easily be adjusted).

Here’s a closer look at each of the globes so that you can admire Natasia’s fabulous work:

My favorite is the lion. I mean, c’mon – look at him! It looks like he’s seen some things, man! Things no lion should ever seeeee…

Anywho!

We made a small sign to the side of the snow globe photo op trying to help parents realize that it was indeed a fun photo op.

Our Tech Services Librarian/ILLer/Book Repairer Michael had on a dark jacket, and so I asked him to hold up our two dragon puppets for a picture example. I didn’t have to do any photoshopping on the image to remove him – it just eerily worked.

Shelby came up with our scavenger hunt. She created sweet little snow globes using construction paper, a brown crayon, and a white crayon. The kids’ checklist contains the shapes of the “snowflakes” in each globe.

Aren’t they cute? And the snowy surprise prize is getting a snowflake stamped onto their hand. I’ve enjoyed telling kids that they now have a snowflake that won’t melt right away.

Jennifer put together a cute coloring sheet that’s been a huge hit. It’s been really fun to see what kids (and some of their parents) create within their snow globes.

We’ve been hanging up ones that are left behind around our activity area, which has also prompted more kids to want us to hang theirs up.

Feel free to click on the “My Snow Globe” image to download this snow globe coloring sheet for your own use.

Finally, and I can’t even tell you where this idea came from, but I made the sign for our winter/winter holiday book display. I guess the idea came from trying to figure out how to incorporate more cotton balls into this month’s design.

This sign came together easier than you’d imagine. I cut out the white card stock letters using my Silhouette machine. Then I cut up jumbo cotton balls into fourths. Then I applied a quick dry craft glue to a letter and put down a piece of cotton ball and sort of stretch it out along the letter.

After I put the letters up using sticky tac, I fluffed out the cotton balls to their fluffiest abilities while still covering up the paper.

And there you have it: Decemberley part 2! As always, don’t hesitate to ask me any questions through social media or email.