Tonight is the last night of Hanukkah/Chanukkah. I took some photos in the neighbourhood of traditional Jerusalem lamps or lamp boxes and I am including them in this post.
Here are a few more fun things for Hanukkah/Chanukkah:
The first two are in Hebrew but have a lot of pictures so for readers who don’t read Hebrew, you can get the gist of the project anyway.
How to for a fondant dreidel necklace My thanks to Tal Tsafrir from Taltalim for allowing me to include a link and use an image of the project.
Hanukkah gelt (money) is a big thing for children and really the more traditional custom (in contrast to gift giving) for this holiday. Make your own chocolate Hanukkah gelt using actual coins as guides.
For families planning Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations or even weddings during this time, you could actually personalize Hanukkah gelt by creating round stickers with your information, to place on the outside of the gelt. Or if you wanted to be really fancy (and if bringing food items without Kosher certification to your celebration location is not a problem,) you could make a mold for poured chocolate with names and so forth.
Here’s another Hanukkah item where you can make your own mold or buy it ready made. I love these draidel crayons. The ones depicted can be ordered through Oriental Trading Company, but you could equally make your own using a small plastic draidel as a mold.
Oil or candles are a big part of Hanukkah. A tutorial for rolled beeswax candles and other candle making can be found at Candlehelp. For oil, it would be fun to do projects related to the properties of oil and water. In particular, when getting your oil and wicks ready, adding water and food coloring below the oil.
For other Hanukkah ideas see:Some Hanukkah Craft Ideas, Hanukkah is coming related artwork, or Felt Food Latke tutorial Hanukkah lights and a few more projects
I have not yet written any posts yet about what we are doing this year in our chug (class), but I hope to start posting about that next week. In the meantime I wanted to post a few ideas for Chanukkah/Hanukkah crafts that can be found here, around the web or are simple enough not to need a tutorial.
Feltboard menorah with candles: Basically choose a menorah shape you like from your own imagination or using a clipart shape you can find. Cut out the menorah shape from any color felt you like. Cut out nine rectangles (I did white but given the variety of colors for Chanukkah candles one could use whatever colors you can think of) and 9 “eye” shapes from yellow/orange felt. Use a rectangle shaped piece of felt as a backboard and you’ve got a Chanukkah felt board. Candles and flames could be reused for Shabbat candles.
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Everyone knows that on Chanukkah (Hanukkah or Hanuka- however you want to spell it!) you eat oily foods. The oily foods most connected with Chanukkah are potato latkes (pancakes) and sufganiot (donuts.) This tutorial will show a very simple latke pattern.
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In honor of Chanukkah, I am posting a photo of a menorah. The menorah is a very popular motif in Jewish art “then and now.” However, the menorah represents the menorah used in the Beit Hamikdash or Temple rather than the Hanukkah lamp used during Hanukkah. Note the difference in the number of lights (seven versus nine.) There are lots and lots of articles on the web that speak about iconography of the Menorah in manuscripts, synagogue mosaics etc. This menorah comes courtesy of my mom who had the opportunity to visit Uzbekistan this September. The Menorah is cut into the drainpipe of the synagogue in Tashkent. Neat, no?
It is officially the Jewish month of Kislev, and that means Chanukkah is coming. I will post a post about craft ideas but in the meantime, I wanted to post about a new item I added to the Birkat Chaverim shop- a Chanukkah lighting accordion book.
I designed this a few years ago and assembled about 20-30 for a company to use as a promotional item (those included business identity information.)
I have also posted a variation on this design on Zazzle as holiday cards and as editable postage stamps. I am including the stamp image below:
