Señora Sánchez beckoned to Josefina. “Come with me,” she said. “I have something for you and your sisters, to thank you for the chiles.” 

I made Josefina a reproduction of the retired Chicken and Chiles set from her Christmas collection, and she is pretty pleased with how it turned out!

The chiles, a gift to Señora Sánchez, are clay strung on rings of floral wire that are glued together. The lantern opens and closes and even latches; I made it from pieces of foam core that I glued together, papier-mâchéd, and painted. The candle is clay and the candleholder is foil from a votive candle holder. The latch is a painted pin I trimmed down and the fastening loop is wire from a twist tie. The windows are rigid plastic I painted with a mix of glue and yellow food coloring. I used fine-tipped colored pens to draw on the design, and strung a strip of leather through the top to make the handle.

The little spotted hen, a gift from Señora Sánchez in exchange for the chiles, stumped me for a long time. I tried several different unsuccessful ways to make her body, before finally settling on floral foam. I used an X-acto knife to carve it into a rough chicken shape, then poked the feathers in. The beak and feet are clay and the legs are wooden sticks. You can’t see her beady eyes very well in this picture, but they are trimmed down pins with painted heads. Unlike the original set, this chicken doesn’t have a cage because she is a free-roam hen who lays her eggs where she pleases. I’ll show those in a later post.