Sister's Father Christmas

This guy is about thirty years old. Made him for my sister.

Some pics of the finished trees

Cooter's astronaut and childhood Snoopy bank

Base has a Scots thistle on one side and a viking on the other.

Has a scuba diver, a hiker, a skier and lots of gardening stuff

Tonio's tree with lions and tigers and rhinos, oh my!

Sam's tree, with dolphins, and sting rays, and octopuses, oh my!

Patty's tree, full of children, and schooling, nuclear reactions, and a mothership.

Closer view of atoms, including snowflake atoms.

Granpa's tree, with money bags, bags of gold coins, a WWII airplane, and a Golden Gloves boxer.  Also a bowling ball and pins, and some gardening stuff.

More nebula beads

Well. . . got it! And way less than the first one. There won't be more than one base from this one though. I don't think.

More beads for the ones who live at Frog Hollow. . . .

In the event ~~

This is what we got. Nor am I unhappy. The other already is higher than what I paid for this (and has two more days to go), and it would have made two very skimpy bases. This will make a generous four.

Well, now that we've gotten to the bases for the trees,

It seems to be like this: the base, as much as any other part of the tree seems to need to be related to the spirit, theme, of the tree. Hence the above piece of wood, cut suitably to capitalize on its "nebula-ness" (and nebula mirrors what goes on at the atomic level in my mind) is for the daughter-in-law-who-is-an-atomic-physicist's tree. . . . My grandson Tonio's tree needs a base from some African wood. The granddaughters, both, I think would be perfect for a sassafras base. Someone I adore has a spiritual connection with redwoods, so -- you can see where this is going, eh?

Finding the right wood/base is problematical, however. For instance, that piece pictured above is in an auction, and there is no guarantee that I'll get it, though I *am* going to try my dangest. . . .