Christmas Wrap-up & Handmade Gifts

Did you know there is a difference between handmade and homemade? I learned a couple years back that handmade refers to items or things while homemade refers specifically to foods. Fun fact of the day!

I hope everyone’s holiday was excellent – ours was as usual. Busy, but wonderful. I love to have a couple days completely filled with family, friends, and food!

Every year, I always try and make presents for people. I grew up hand making presents for people as long as I can remember. My mum and grandparents still have paper ornaments I made when I was three. I still remember making cinnamon dough ornaments with my mum to give as gifts. It’s something that has always been extremely important to me, and therefore it’s something I want to pass along to my daughter. Since she was a year old she has been making presents for people and I hope she grows up enjoying it!

For her gifts this year, we did a combination of photo gifts, and ornaments. My family loves photos, so these are always a winner.

These were incredibly simple to make. We sat down with watercolors and salt to make the backgrounds. Then she looked through photos of her and Daddy and picked her favorite, and of her and Mimi and picked her favorite. For Mimi’s gift I did a little ‘interview’ with her about her Mimi (what Mimi likes to do, her favorite thing to do at Mimi’s house, etc) and wrote it up under the photo. Then I snagged two shadowbox frames from Target, assembled them together, and voila! Perfect gifts from a toddler.

For the ornaments I made a cinnamon dough, and we rolled and cut out shapes together with cookie cutters. Then I used got out some ABC stamps and she helped me stamp the letters on. Once they were all dry (a few days later), she painted them (I did the letter outline in white of course). The little ones were strung up as garland for our living room, and the big ones will be gifts. As you can see, I didn’t turn the snowman quite enough as he was drying so he got a bit curled. Adds character right? Right.

As for my handmade gifts, I did some drawings and paintings for friends.

  

And also some Doctor Who bookmarks! I definitely made one for myself as well – who wouldn’t crack up seeing that face sticking out of your book?! On the backs of each bookmark are the words ‘Property of (insert recipients name) written out in Gallifreyan (aka the Doctor’s language for those non-Whovians out there). I found this awesome Gallifreyan translator on DeviantArt; it’s pretty fabulous.

And being somewhat of a crazy cat lady, I made a couple new toys for our two kitties. Again, very simple. I cut out two pieces of felt and sewed a button and a bit of detailing on, then stitched around the edge, stuffed ’em full of catnip and sewed the rest shut! Pardon the wobbly stitching – I don’t hand stitch things often. One of my kitties could care less about them, but our other one is OBSESSED with them! He wrestles, chews, throws, and generally tries to destroy them to get at the catnip. It’s hilarious.

I WANTS IT!!!

As for my homemade gifts (aka yummy treats) tune in for my Holiday December Baking post on Monday!

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Life in Photos

I think Life In Photos is going to be a new series. Throughout the week, I always take photos of things we are doing, crafts we make, places we go, so I figured I could give you a glimpse into my daily life via photos.

Click to enlarge. . .yet another thing I’m working on in the blog revamp – bigger page images!

1. Spreading out to work on my #30Lists project.
2. The little miss happily cookie cutting cinnamon ornaments.
3. Cat comfy makes no sense.
4. Cinnamon ornaments out to dry.
5. A little nighttime cocoa indulgence.
6. Holiday cards I made and mailed for the Deviant Art Holiday Card Project. (I encourage you to check that out – it’s not just for DA members and it’s a great cause!).

I like black and white photos. I don’t know why; perhaps because my main focus in art is graphite portraits? I just love the contrasts. Whatever the reason, I like everyday photos better in black and white.

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Family Photo Shoot

Saturday morning we had our yearly family photos done. Fall is my absolute favorite time for taking outdoor photos. The colors, the atmosphere; it’s just perfection.

We always go to Ambient Light Photography by Mary Baxter. I have known her for fifteen years now, and besides being an absolutely wonderful woman, she is so talented. If you’re local in NH, definitely book with her! I just love her portraits.

     

I know I’m her mother so I’m extremely biased, but my daughter is such a beauty. I just every inch of her little face! I can’t believe how big she is this year. Which is so cliche, and also entirely true. She’s gotten so tall, her hair so long; she’s just growing right up!

    

Now that our family photos are taken, I can dive into massive Shutterfly projects – another yearly task I do. Putting together a family ‘yearbook’, designing our Christmas card, among other gifts and new prints for the home. It’s quite a task, but I love it. I just love photographs.

 

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Doodlebook

My latest crafting project is one for my daughter. I saw this on Pinterest one day, and thought it was a great idea!

(Here’s the link to original blog post on ‘All For the Boys’. http://www.allfortheboys.com/home/2013/2/18/surviving-sick-days-diy-dry-erase-book.html)

Here’s mine for my little girl!

At family gatherings I asked everybody for a photo of them to use in a special project for Ellie. They happily obliged, and I went work. I booted up Photoshop and first made all my photos black and white. Then I reduced the opacity on them to about 60%, so the black marker would really pop. Just print them out and slip them in a clear plastic sleeve. I used super low print quality to save on ink (hence the white lines across the photos) and printed on plain printer paper too. I’m thinking next time I update the photos I’ll add everyone’s name to the pages too (Mommy, Daddy, Mimi, etc.) She knows who they are, but she’s really starting to learn her letters, and that would be a great visual aid!

Eraser cloth and marker storage.

When it came time to cover the binder, I debated sewing an actual sleeve for it. . .for about 45 seconds. I really went the lazy route with this craft and decided gluing would be much less effort. So, armed with my hot glue gun, I got to work. The material is a vintage sheet I got at a yard sale for $1.00. (I have a habit of snagging vintage sheets at yard sales since I love the patterns. . .my closet is rapidly filling up). I hastily cut out a (very uneven) rectangle to cover the binder and glued it down. Then, I cut out a nice even piece to fit over the inside so it looks (halfway) pretty! Note I did not hem any edges at all – I stuck with purely hot glue for this project, and I didn’t cut the squares big enough to fake a hem using folds with glue, whoops. The pen and eraser cloth pockets were made by the same method – cut out a piece of fabric and hot glue all the edges down! Works quite efficiently!

For the cover, I ‘hemmed’ the title piece with hot glue – folding over the edges and hot gluing them down so you have a (roughly) even rectangle to write on. I found a font I liked (it’s called Pea Ellie Bellie – check out my Pinterest board here for a link to download it!) and free-handed the lettering onto the fabric with a pencil – believe it or not you can actually erase pencil from fabric. Then I traced over it with a Sharpie, and glued it to the cover! Done!

I made it for my daughter to play with, I swear. . .but my hubby always said he wanted to be a pirate!

Total cost of this project for me was $3.00 – I had to purchase the clear sleeves for the paper. My mum had a three ring binder for me to use, and I had everything else. I suppose the cost of printer ink is in there too somewhere. But it’s easy and cheap, and I like that as she get’s older we can update the photos, or even add new things in there for her to draw on! It’ll be great for car rides in another year or so – I guess whenever I trust her with a dry erase marker unsupervised!

If you make one for your kiddo feel free to send me a pic or link to it – I’d love to see it! What other crafty things have you made for your kids?

Art: Toddler Edition

I am one of those crazy mums who saves all her child’s artwork. And I mean ALL. From her first scribble, to her finger paints, to her sticker collages. I have every single one. In handy, digital form! Yes, I save every single image she’s ever made – by scanning it into the computer and having it as a digital file. It’s such a space saver. I have a wooden portfolio in which I’ve put some of my favorite pieces she’s done, but for the most part they get scanned and tossed.

Some of my favorites from January through May.

At first, my little miss was upset about losing her art – she happened to catch me one day throwing away a fistful of her drawings & paintings and began screaming “No, Mommy!! Not trash!!” I could feel each heart string snap, I’m telling you. But I pushed down the guilt and explained to her that I had scanned her drawings on to the computer so we could look at them any time she wanted. She was thrilled! Now she likes to take her art and ‘put it in the computer’ as she has dubbed the process. Which brings me to the point of this post: The Toddler Art Gallery.

June was a busy art month!

Even back when I was pregnant, I knew that our little one would be doing art projects. I love arts and crafts, and really wanted to incorporate them into my little one’s life. I also knew that I would want to have a place to display them, at least temporarily. So shortly after her first birthday, I made her her own gallery in the playroom. It keeps the fridge less cluttered, and gives her more of sense that it’s hers, I think. Every time she finishes a picture she immediately says “Let’s hang it in my gallery!”. Ah, my heart sighs with happiness every time.

I made this image to hang above it.

The quote image was actually part of a magazine ad, for a print company I think? Anyway, I trimmed off the company logo/info parts, backed it with some scrapbook paper, and put it in a frame to hang on the wall. Simple, and FREE! Eventually, I’d like to decorate the clothespins with washi tape, but given all my other projects, that’s pretty low on the priority list! The gallery itself is just bakers twine strung between thumbtacks. Again with the simple and free factor. Two of my favorite things for a project!

Her first ever nature collage! I really liked this project. We used white contact paper (sticky side up) so she could just stick on all her treasures.

I take everything down on the first of the month and scan it in, so she gets a fresh clean gallery to fill. I can’t wait until she’s old enough to start trying to draw real ‘things’ and telling me stories about them. It’ll be so much fun to look at them hung all together!

What art related things to you like to do with your little ones?

And since we’re on the topic of art, I just wanted to remind you to visit my Pure Inspiration page! I’ve added quite a few more gorgeous works of art since launch day – go take a look!