Christmas Crafts

I love to make gifts at Christmastime.  I don't know why, but hand-made gifts are kinda my thing.  After a few very stressful years, Jake started limiting how many craft-gifts I could make each holiday.  I usually run all my ideas past him and he helps me figure out what is a realistic amount of work to dump on myself in December.  Luckily Jami came to visit for 5 week - starting half way through Dec, so I had some extra time to finish stuff.

For my parents I wanted to re-do the Proclamation.  Not the actual words - let's leave that to the prophet - just to formatting for their wall.  I was going to make one for my in-laws but since they're in Russia for another year and a half, I didn't think they would want another thing to throw into storage (Mom & Dad G: when you get back, let me know if you want a copy.  I might even make a different version for you guys!  Spoilers!  haha!)  anyways... I wanted something fun that also felt grown up.  I really like it, but after spending so many hours on something, you always look at the things you wish you did better.  I made one of the Provo Temple for their wall and I swapped out for Mt Timp to hang on our wall. 

Here are the finished products (yes, we are so spiritual that we have TWO Proclamations on our wall):

For the nieces and nephews we made Time Zone clocks.  I bought the clocks from IKEA ($2/ea), Jake spray painted them black, I designed the paper faces and printed them out, we reassembled them.  It wasn't as easy as that makes it seem though.  There were a few snags, but we got it all sorted out eventually.  The only bummer is - the mechanisms broke on a few clocks when we were taking them apart, so I never got to finish ours.  Oh well, maybe the next time I go to IKEA I'll pick up a few more clocks to try and finish mine.

While we were writing cards to go with the clocks, Scarlett wrote her name on an envelope!?!  I had no idea she knew how to do that!  I knew she could write an "S" but it's like the rest of her letters just clicked overnight!  I love her little handwriting!

One of my friends in my ward (Gina) asked me if I would help her design her Christmas card.  They took family photos in the summer and took another photo of just their feet, since they were all in "Chucks".  So I put it together for her:

I don't like people to pay me for helping them, I'd rather skill-swap or trade-talents.  So in return for her card, Gina helped me bake cupcakes for some of our friends/neighbors/HTees/VTees.  I was talking with one of my friends about those cupcakes a few weeks after I delivered them and she thought they were from a fancy bakery!  Gina is the dessert queen!  She basically did all the work while I just enjoyed licking the empty bowls clean.  We made chocolate mint and gingerbread.  Yum yum yum!

Then to go with the cupcakes, I cut a vinyl nativity on my cricut and put it on an ornament.  My only regret is that I bought glass ornaments... there were a few that shattered before arriving at their destinations.  Darn it!  Luckily I had a few extra.

For our ward service auction awhile back I auctioned off a digital card/announcement.  My friend Vanisa won.  She asked if I would make their Christmas card but she also wanted it to include Kwanzaa, since they celebrate both.  Challenge accepted!  Before I began I researched Kwanzaa cause I didn't really know anything about that holiday.  Then I had the task of blending the two holidays on one card.  It was tricky - especially since there aren't a lot of free Kwanzaa clip art.  I finally had to make my own African themed background using some crazy photoshop techniques that I learned on the spot, but I wanted the African print to match the Christmas sweater print so that they would blend together on the card.  I am happy with how it turned out!

Then my last Christmas photoshop project was from my cousin, Jenn.  She took her family to a studio to get a nice photo for their Christmas card.  When she got them back there wasn't a single picture with everyone looking.  This happens to me with my girls ALL the time!  Luckily I've been practicing my head swapping skills in photoshop.  The best results are if the original and the replacement heads are taken seconds apart - so the lighting and set up are all the same.  That's not always possible, but we found a few heads to work with.  I switched out 2 of her boys' heads and added more blue sweater to the bottom of one of their shirts.  I hope she's happy with the results.  I'm still just learning all these techniques, so I'm sure I'm making rookie mistakes, but hopefully it's better than "demon eyes" (as she called them!)