25 Gifts

It’s here. It’s Christmas day and I hope you are all having a great day and have received many wonderful gifts, not all of the material kind.  While I am writing this post a few days before the actual day I know that it will be wonderful as I have been looking forward to it since last Christmas.  I so enjoy seeing the reactions of those who receive gifts I have purchased and especially those I have made. 

I indicated in the last post that I wanted to post images of a gift I made for my daughter.  It’s small book called 25 gifts and it’s made from the Advent twinchies post by Kathryn Antyr at Soul Journal.  Kathryn posted 24 gifts and I added the 25th, The 25th being the “Gift of spirituality”.  

Here are the twinchies (the inside pages), click on the image to see a larger view.

 

 

 

Here is the cover I made for it:

In the two images below you will see the circled numbers used from the advent numbers I posted a few days ago.

 

Since not all the images are easy to guess what is being said, i created an index at the end of the book.

 

Thanks to Anne, at Gaal Creative,  for posting about the Zutter Bind-it-all machine.  It really helped with this project.  It would have taken a lot longer without it.

Handmade wrapping paper and tags

I've mentioned before that I like to make handmade Christmas wrapping paper and gift tags.  This year I scanned some to show you what I do.

The wrapping paper is simply freezer paper painted with acrylic paint for the background.  Then used more acrylic paint on a rubber stamp for the greenery.  The tag is made from shipping tags, pigment ink, a rubber stamp and a Santa image. 

The tags below are all made from shipping tags that have been altered with paint or pigment ink and images added.  Not hard to do and yet they give your gifts a personal touch.

 

I am trying to get a post together for the evening of the 25th to show off a gift I made for my daughter but I may not get to it until I return from our trip to New Mexico to see her and the rest of the family.  If I don't get the post together before I leave, I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  I'll see you when I return on the 29th or so.

Enjoy your families and savor the moments you're together. 

Thanks for reading.

I Love This Video

This isn't holiday related but it is art related. Music video for Tanya Davis' song Art by Andrea Dorfman

Enjoy!

 

OOPS I forgot, you will have to scroll all the way down and turn off the playlist player.

Do you make your own Christmas cards?

This is my second year making one.  Last years was a collage using incorporating my husband's and B-I-L's legs. Yes It sound weird but it came out cute if I do say so myself.

Thanks to Suzi Blu's class I actually painted a picture I like. Alright, I admit, the hat wasn't painted, I stole it from a catalog.  Don't tell my family ok?  This one is 9 X 12 and I scanned it to print on cardstock. I still have to mail it but I'm excited for my family to see it.  

 

 

Do you make your own Christmas cards?

A Freebie & How is your neighborhood decorating?

Freebie

I've been working on my Advent twinchies from the prompts provided by Kathryn at the Soul Journal group and I needed some numbers to go with the images I made.  This is what I came up with and I thought I would make them available in case someone else could use them. They are just under 1 inch in size and can be printed on card stock and cut out with a 1" circle punch.  You are free to print these out and use them any way you like.

To get the correctly sized image, click on the image below. When the full sized image is on your screen, you can:

1. Print right from the browser, or
2. Right click on the numbers and choose "Save Image As" or "Save Picture as"  then choose a location to save the image on your hard drive.  Once downloaded, double click the image to open it and print.   

 

Neighborhood Decorations:

This inflatable Nativity scene popped up in my neighborhood this year. Yes, an inflatable Nativity scene and it cracks me up.

It's not a funny "box of ha ha's" kind of laugh either, it's a "that's just wrong" kind of laugh.  Just who thought an inflatable Nativity scene was a good idea?  And what makes it worse is that this is what it looks like during the day:

Other than the big snowmen they have at tree lots, I hadn't seen many inflatables until we moved to this farm town two years ago. People here have them all over the place. And they range from Santa's to Grinches to the Abominable Snowman. (We're a little hard pressed to figure out what the Abominable Snowman has to do with Christmas but it's a snow creature so OK.) I'm not a scrooge by any measure and I love all most outdoor Christmas decorations, but an inflatable nativity scene just makes me shake my head.  Is nothing sacred? 

What kind of decorations are in your neighborhood?