Holiday Wrap Up Day 6

I find it hard to believe that I am writing about Christmas gifts when the weather outside is determined to be summer. It is a sunny 70 degree day out in Oakland, and to be honest, I kind of miss winter. When I confessed this to my sister on the phone today, she assured me I would get my fill of cold weather when I come to visit her on the other side of the country in Delaware this month. I am sure that I will be happy to be back to the sun and warm once I have been away.

Today I wanted to just wrap up all the other presents I made this year for people. Here are all of the less cute, but still fun presents I made for the adults of the family. By no means did I make stuff for everyone, we did buy a few things, but a majority of the presents this year were handmade by me or purchased from other handmade places.

For my sister, I made her some Scrabble tile pendants. I went to a wonderful art store to pick out some Chyiogami papers. I did not realize how big the sheets would be, but I had to have two of them none-the-less. I think that some other projects can be made out of the left overs of the paper. Here are the tiles while they were drying:



It looked like I had some sort of odd science experiment going on. I thought that by putting some glasses over the tiles as they dried, I would prevent any dust from landing on them and being in the glaze. I really enjoyed making them and can totally understand why there are so many sellers out there. It was a fun, quick, and satisfying project. Here are my six finished tiles:



I also wanted to keep them covered to make sure that any errant glitter from the project I did for my Mom would not interfere. I made a candle holder project from this year's Martha Stewart Holiday magazine. I am always a sucker for her holiday issues, and this was no exception seeing as it boosted having a ton of handmade gift ideas. One that I really liked was this project that involved copying a picture into several sizes and placing it into the candle holders. You then were supposed to take glue and a fine tipped bottle and squeeze it on to cover the black parts of the image then sprinkle on the glitter.



Here they are getting ready for their glue bath. I found that the small tipped applicator bottles did not work well with the thick glue I bought, so I ended up painting on the glue. It worked out well, but the holders took forever to dry. By the time they would have been ready for their close-up, I was snatching them up to pack them for shipping. Sorry there is no finished shot!

For my sister-in-law Kathy, she wanted one of the burned velvet wreathes I made for my Mom and Beth. Luckily, I still had some of the materials left over. I found this project also courtesy of Martha Stewart a number of years ago. I finally got up the nerve to make one and bought all the materials and made all the rubber stamps. When it came time to do the actual project though, I made it for my sister for Christmas a few years ago. When my Mom's present that same year did not turn out, I cranked out another one for her. I was hoping to have the next one I made finally be mine, but I ended up making it for Kathy. Thank goodness I over bought on material the first time due to reading the directions wrong. I hope I have enough to make one more for me. Here is a picture of the one I made for Beth originally, but Kathy's looked almost the same:



I think that the next one of these will also be the last one, unless someone wants to purchase it from me. ;)

The last gift that I made that got out on time is the scarf I knit for my Grandmother. This is one of the first things I got done actually. I of course did not take any finished product pictures of this either, but here is it when I first started:



This was the first thing that I have ever knit. It is the "My so called scarf" pattern, and I really like how it looks. I am thinking about making one for myself too with some yarn that I bought at the same time. It is the same yarn just different colors, more purples and dark blues than this.

Well today I am going to try something new, free quilting on my machine. Since it does not have a stippling foot, I am kind of intimidated with this process, but I am going to give it a shot. I also have bread to attend to. I hope that it turns out. More tomorrow.

Holiday Wrap Up Day 3

Yesterday was pretty productive on the whole. I continued knitting on my project for Da, and the house cleaning came to an end. It was a tough job that took two days for me to be satisfied that it is clean, but now I am thoroughly enjoying a clean abode. So the English muffins are still waiting to be made, and I am going to start a new craft tutorial today since the cleaning is finished. I also have to make a trek outside to pick up some tea and other dinner supplies. I really wished our neighborhood had a small grocery store in it, but alas it does not. I will be relying on other places to acquire my supplies, mainly a World Market and BevMo. Let's hope I can get everything I need there. I am also going to cave in and take a nap since this cold is not going away. I need to get better before I fly out in two weeks.

In the holiday wrap up today are the gifts I made for Claudia. She is Brenna's younger sister who loves art, read as coloring, and is less into running around like her older sister. I decided to make her an I Spy bag. It was rather simple and helped me keep my goal of using up and buying less in the way of supplies. I used some pieces of red fleece that were leftovers from a shopping cart cover project for Jozef. I had to buy a bit of clear vinyl for the window, and this was my first time working with the stuff. It went pretty well, I just hope it holds up. I filled the interior with small pieces of plastic that are used for weights in stuffed toys or bean bags. I had those left over from a snow people project I did for my sister one year. I also had to buy the objects for her to find in the bag. I found these interesting buttons and button covers at a craft store that were on sale, so those became the objects. Some of the buttons were animals, some were farm related objects, some were food, and still others were beach things. It made for good variety. Here is the finished project:



I also made her a crayon roll. I found a great tutorial from Sew,Mama,Sew's Blog and their handmade holidays series. They do a great job of compiling great easy to finish projects for handmade gifts. They had a tutorial from Skip to My Lou. It was very easy and straight forward. The pictures were great and the directions were very easy. I made this entirely out of things I had except for the iron on vinyl. I made the interior fabric from scraps from Craig's gift, that is tomorrow's edition, and the puppet theater I made for Brenna's birthday last year. I also trimmed it with left over rick rack from an old Advent calendar project. Sadly I forgot to take a picture of it when I was done. I did make mine bigger than the tutorial so it would hold 24 crayons as well as a small pad of paper. I also did not put the iron on vinyl on the entire back piece after reading about how it made the crayons slip out. I made sure to keep two inches of the fabric uncovered. I figured any crayon marks on that part would not be seen any way due to the front of the pockets. Well that wraps up her homemade gifts.

Now I am off to work on a new craft tutorial for the blog. I hope to have that done and out to you once the holiday wrap up is over.