Here is a fun, if not terribly successful, little Christmas project. I thought that mini festive automata could be a jolly alternative to Christmas cards, and this was an experiment in that sort of direction.

The mechanism is a bent paperclip, pushed through the inside of a matchbox, and held in place with little blobs of green stuff. The pudding is a pingpong ball painted with acrylics.

The movement is up and down and also lurches forward and back, creating a drunken sort of attitude. I guess it has been properly soaked in brandy for months.

The matchbox hasn’t really lived up to the battering that it has naturally got from just putting everything together. I don’t think that matchboxes are the way to go with this, or maybe I just need a gentler hand.