Great Russian Gifts!

I love Santa Claus.  I have always loved Santa Claus.  I'm not sure why, but I do.

This absolutely gorgeous Santa Claus Christmas Matryoshka doll set arrived in the mail today.  Honestly, these pictures don't begin to do this justice.  

 This is the entire set.  The big Santa doll opens up and all the ornaments fit inside him.  He's got to be almost 10" tall and the larger ornaments are at least 6" tall.  The smallest one is the little yellow church and it's about 3" tall.

 I'm not sure why he is carrying a fish, but it's a gorgeous fish with gold metalic demarking the scales.  Santa has gold glitter on his hat and there is silver glitter in the stars and clouds.  The moon on the back is a beautiful touch.  And this was all hand painted by individual artisans.

 These are the men ornaments.

 I think the one on the left is a snowman, then there is a tree and I think the one on the right is a little church.

These are the ladies in their little muffs.

All of these beauties came from Great Russian Gifts (www.greatrussiangifts.com).  I won them in a contest on  Craftbits earlier this week.  I was thrilled when I won, but even more so after opening the package today.  I expected them to be pretty.  I didn't expect them to be nearly as pretty as they really are in person.  I also didn't have a clue how big they are - things always look smaller in pictures. 

Great Russian Gifts has lots of sets of these ornament sets (but I don't see this exact one on their site right now) and lots of sets of Russian nesting dolls. They also have other handpainted christmas ornaments, jewelry, faberge style boxes, figurines, paintings, toys and games and lots of other things I haven't had a chance to look at yet.  I think I'm going to order some of the individual ornaments (there is the cutest Santa ornament).  I wish you could see these up close and personal - they are really special.

Craftbits and Craft Gossip both have contests going on pretty much all the time.  I like both websites because they both have lots of crafting how to information and they both provide unlimited inspiration.  You have to register before you can enter the Craftbits contests, but it's free and quick.  I'm not usually very lucky and don't usually win many contests, but this was a terrific one to win!!!