SOUTHBURY, CT -- The calendar says August, and winter's chill is a dim memory now, but there's a place right here in Southbury where it's Christmas all year long.

Helen Hine spends her days creating handcrafted Santa Claus figures at her home...and a visit to her basement workshop is like a trip to the North Pole.

Helen collects bolts of fabric from burlap to brocade. There are boxes of buttons, scraps of leather and spools of ribbon and braid -- all finishing touches for her one-of-a-kind creations.

Each an individual labor of love, Helen's Santa Claus figures range from 18 inches to nearly three feet tall. Helen told Voices she's been making the figures for three years now.

About a year ago, she stopped purchasing precast Santa heads and began creating her own. Helen sculpts her Santa heads from "Sculpey" clay.There are no casts, no molds. The faces are minutely detailed, bearing the wrinkles and shadows of age.

"I want them all to be different," she said. "Each one is an experiment. I try to incorporate the best of one into the next one."

With an artist's eye, Helen has made a study of human faces and the way they change over time.It's the subtle details -- the laugh lines, the moles, that make her work so realistic. "I find myself staring at people's features a lot, "she admitted. "The most fun is sculpting the noses. The sky's the limit with noses!"

Once a face is sculpted, glass eyes are set into place. The larger faces receive eyelashes. Ruddy cheeks come alive with a skillful application of rouge; eyebrows, mustaches, and beards are fashioned from fluffy wool in a variety of natural shades.

Once a head is complete, Helen turns her attention to clothing and accessories. Though she has made and sold several Santa figures in the familiar bright red garb, she prefers a less traditional look.

Helen creates regally dressed Santas, outfitted with rich satins and velvets in bright jewel tones with accents of sulver and gold. One wears a white coat accented with colorful beads. His white leather pouch is filled with presents wrapped in iridescent papers and he carries a golden bell. Bells are Helen's trademark and most of her Santas wear one in one form or another.

Woodland Santas are dressed in muted reds and greens, in a burlap coat, perhaps, accented by tiny pine cones.A woodsy Santa might carry a rustic birdhouse or a miniature tree. He might be perched on a wooden stump, or in a willow chair;the toys in his pouch might be wrapped in brown craft paper.

Using scraps of leather, Helen sews a pair of boots and mittens for each Santa. Though her earliest figures were trimmed with real fur, she has recently found a supplier of imitation fur that meets her expectations.

Helen dyes her own fabrics to suit her needs. A rough wool fabric might receive a mottled dye, to achieve a certain effect.

A stickler for detail, she scours flea-markets, fairs and out-of-the-way shops. A string of wooden beads will form the belt for a Woodland Santa. A cast-off earring will become a gold medallion. "I try to make most of my own accessories," she said, "and I never throw anything away."

Heirlooms in the Making Santa figures are available commercially, Helen acknowledged, but she maintains that hers are different from the rest. Built on a wooden base rather than a plastic cone, Helen's figures are built to last.

A collector herself, she began making her own Santa figures when she saw one in a shop for $1,300. She decided she could produce a better product for considerably less.

Like any work of art, each figure is made one at a time, then numbered and signed.

In the past, Helen has sold her Santas by word of mouth. She told Voices she did quite well last year at a private crafts show, at which she also sold lighted grapevine wreaths decorated with handmade salt-box houses...