There is no time like the holidays for making gifts. You can enjoy Christmas even more by creating one of these easy-to-make gifts for the home.
Christmas ornaments are fun to make and display on your holiday tree. They can be as simple as “Porcelain Ornament” or more complex, using several images in a collage.
In addition to portraying holiday images, your ornaments can celebrate a marriage, rejoice in the birth of a child, congratulate for an anniversary, or relive a memorable vacation.
Try substituting the porcelain disk with a pre-cut wooden disk. The wood should be lightly sanded, painted with 2 coats of gesso, and then painted with 2 coats acrylic before stamping your images.
It’s the little things you do that make your home special for the holidays. An inexpensive way to add a festive touch to any room is to decorate a wallplate. Wallplates come in all styles and finishes to meet your needs. The plate used in “Santa Wallplate” was purchased in unfinished wood.
As long as you can sew a running stitch, you can make these coasters for hot and cold beverages. A thin layer of cotton batting is sandwiched between two layers of bleached muslin. The top layer of muslin has been stamped and colored with markers. This is a great project for a beginning stamper to try their hand at stamping on fabric. All inks and markers used must be waterproof, or they will bleed when they become wet.
This final project, “Family Recipes Spanning Generations” requires experience working with several computer programs. You need to be familiar with using a scanner, working with a photo program such as Photoshop, burning CDs.
The project came about as I looked at old notebooks full of family recipes. Many of the recipes are handwritten, while others are cut from magazines and newspapers. I did not want to part with the originals, but I thought that other family members would enjoy having copies. Scanning recipes and burning the files to a CD allowed me to share paperless copies. One benefit is that CDs take up very little space, and the recipient can print and bind the pages if they so desire.
To personalize your pages, add photos of the family member who passed along the recipe.
Enjoy the holiday season and creating new gifts for your home!
For more information on the products mentioned in this article, please visit your local retail store.
