Sinterklaas styling in Black and White (#DIY)

No one could have missed that Sinterklaas, the Dutch child legend is back in town. My sun Lars starts to realise who Sinterklaas is. Last week he still called him a gnome, because of his big white beard I guess, but since the Sint has landed, he really became Sinterklaas. Super nice to see him so enthousiast about the good old man, and mama is even more enthousiastic;-).
Finally I have a reason to decorate the house with nice Sinterklaas decoration, although I don’t have a lot of time. At the end of october my colleges at Nyenrode started again (next to my normal job) and I’ve been working on my Master thesis proposal for a couple of weeks now. But it’s so nice to make a few little DIY projects and I do need a break sometimes. So I made a couple of things for the Sinterklaas styling in our house.

Houses from ActionNederland painted Matt black

At Action Nederland I bought these nice houses made of Mdf. I didn’t use the stickers from the Box, instead I spray painted the houses Matt black. I have two others to spray paint, but I will keep them for Christmas I think.

After spray painting the houses I put the houses together and pout some electrical tea lights in it (from Praxis or ‘t Kruidvat). On the box of the houses was some note that real tea lights can cause fire, so don’t use them.

As decoration I found these boxes from Playmobil at Albert Heijn. They were in the bonusfolder, but I think that they sell them every year at Kruidvat too. The only thing was that I didn’t want to leave them alone with Larsman, there are a lot of small parts in the box and he is only 2,5 years old (the age on the box says 4-10 years old). The houses became really great, maybe I will leave them till Christmas, without the Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet Playmobil.

Shoe set calendar with tea light and horse

The shoe set calendar is from Jetjes en Jobjes and the nice print from an old hous to fold into a small light is from Pipowagen aan Zee. Both prints are free printables. As a light, I use an electronic tea light. At Jetjes en Jobjes you can find more nice decorations for Sinterklaas, like gift labels for your gift packages. And at Leukigheidjes you can also find nice gift labels.

For the garland I printed the silhouette Sinterklaas on his horse from Sweettable.
Edit: I understood that you can’t download the silhouette anymore so I made a silhouette on my own. It’s not the same, but it’s still for free. You can find the silhouette here. I also made a Facebook group for the files to be downloaded, so I hope you can download it. Otherwise just become a member of the facebook group and I’m certain you can download the file. Here you can find the Facebook groep. I cut out the silhouette from the print and draw it 11 times with a white pencil on thick black carton. After that I cut them out with a scissor and put them on the table with the good side faced downwards. A few dots of glue on it and then a rope fixed on the glue. I also put some transparent adhesive tape over the rope, just to be sure. Let it all dry and your garland is finished for the Sinterklaas styling.

For the cushion I used the same silhouette as above for the garland. I enlarged the print in photoshop to A3 and printed it on the printer of my work. After cutting it out I put the silhouette on the cushion and draw a line around the silhouette with a pencil on het cushion. I didn’t have time to make a cushion myself, so I bought one at Hema. One side was a little bit rough, so I used the other side. Before I started painting with textile paint, I first put a piece af thick carton inside the cushion cover, to prevent that paint will come on the other side of the cover. I painted it twice (with black textile paint from Pipoos), then I fixed the painting on the back (so on the inside of the cushion cover) with my iron on the cotton level. Put a cushion in the cover and another thing is finished for the Sinterklaas styling.

The Sint and Piet garland and the Sinterklaas garland are made with letters that I found on Chanty-2-chic. You can find the letters here and other signs can be found here. I printed the triangles on a little bit thicker white paper (160gr/m2) and cut them out. Next I cut a little bit bigger size of the triangles out of black carton and glued the white triangles on the black paper with pritt glue. Then just like the silhouette garland above, good side faced downwards, dots of glue on it, rope over it and then some adhesive tape over the rope.

I bought the small rocking horse at Action Nederland, and I spray painted it matt black. The colored Sint, Piet and horse dolls are DIY sets from Action Nederland. You can use them as hand dolls, but I think everything will fall of if you will use them for that. I have slided it over a transparent bottle, so they stay straight up.