All together, now! [Christmas 2009 Makes]

It’s been forever since I last posted, and the New Year has long since swooshed past. (I can’t believe it’s already the middle of January!) Nevertheless, I promised photos of the things I made at home this past Christmas, so photos it is. I didn’t have the time to do a lot of handmade gifts this year, but I made an effort to use upcycled gift wrappings or wrappings with reusable elements whenever possible. I ended up taking a lot of photos, so I’ve combined them into little mini-montages here to save space.

Wristlets / hand warmers for my roommate M. Knit with some worsted wool yarn left over from one of my grandmother’s previous projects. I modified a basic pattern (for some reason I can’t remember which site I found it on anymore, but I think it might have been this pattern, or something like it) by using a mock cable for the hand sections of the warmers, and asymmetrical stripes in the wrist sections. I cast on fewer stitches than the pattern calls for, but even so, the wristlets were a little big on me (which is why I added the bows – to make the wrist sections adjustable). Fortunately, M has larger wrists than me, and they actually fit her quite well even without the ribbons pulled taut. I guess she may have to go without bows, but at least now I know that my gauge was not way off! (I just have abnormally small wrists). *Unrelated Note* The hat that partially appears in the top left of the largest image is a cute new cloche that my mother bought for me from Target.  I added a vintage clip/brooch that my grandmother gave to me when I was little, and was very pleased with the result!

Gift for my friend L, and wrapping. I found this awesome vintage brooch in the Salvation Army at the end of last semester, buffed it up, and pinned it to a fat ponytail holder, making sure not to stab the elastic (just the fabric covering) so that L can choose either to wear it in her hair, or to remove it and use it as a pin. I was quite proud of what I did with the box, which is a triangular cardboard box that once held a couple of Ghirardelli chocolate squares that were sent to my parents in a gift basket. I undid all the glued seams of the box, flattened it, and traced it out on a page of an old Ikea catalog. Then I cut out the traced shape, glued it over the original outside of the box, and glued the seams back together in a slightly different formation so that you could open the box and see the pin/hairthing lying flat on its little bed of polyfil. I then tucked the flaps in, tied the box up with a thin ribbon (which I’d retrieved from another gift that I’d wrapped and given on Christmas Day!), and I was ready to go.

A roundup of some other gifts I wrapped at home this Christmas. Starting at the top LH corner and going clockwise:

• [for my bf's brother and sister-in-law] Gold paper, wired ribbon, with a personalized ornament for a nametag (One year my mom had her small group make ornaments on New Year’s Eve with things they were thankful for and wanted to remember about the previous year; this is one of the leftover blanks that I still had floating around in my bedroom.  All I did was decorate it with a gold paint pen and thread a ribbon through as a hanger.  P & C just got married in 2009, so I thought it would be an appropriate add-on to their gift, should they choose to keep the tag and use it on their tree).
• [for my parents] Envelopes (which I purposely did not write on or seal, so that they could be reused!), ribbons, and gift tags made of construction paper, computer paper, and bits of images from a Costco catalog (the red dots – which were from a cranberry juice ad) and the same Ikea catalog I used for L’s gift (the green knit pattern – from an image of a throw or rug or something like that).  In retrospect, I wish I had used a slightly fatter ribbon for my mom’s gift because I liked the bold effect of the polkadot ribbon on the one I used for my dad, but we did not have any other sizes of olive green ribbon in the bins in the basement.
• [for my bf D, who visited us for Christmas this year!] Each layer is wrapped in a different couple of pages from a Costco catalog.  He likes computers so I drew a computer on the tag and used computer themed pages (the bottom one is actually a Mac ad).  I had to do some clever taping and seaming together of pages (I used a double spread for the top box, which kept the pattern consistent, and for the DVD on the bottom, whose Mac ad was about half an inch shy of being able to fully cover the box, I cut a slip of another page with a fun contrasting image to fit in the gap, and kept it on the bottom of the gift.  Tied up with two kinds of gathered red ribbon (wide grosgrain in the middle, and thin satin on the outside).
• [for A, a friend of D's and mine] This one I was kind of proud of.  Ikea’s catalogs are very prettily designed, and so they often have several pages at a time whose color schemes are vaguely similar. I chose two that coordinated, and taped them together, then arranged the gift so that the image of the vase and flowers would be on top.  I then strategically tied on a green grosgrain ribbon to hide the prices on the page, and made up a matching gift tag with construction paper and marker / pen on computer paper.
• [for my grandparents] No recycling and not much homemade here, but my grandma really likes sophisticated-looking, new things (she doesn’t go in for the upcycled look; I guess it’s a generational thing), so I used gold paper, full, classic bows (made with the same two-color wired satin ribbon, which I simply flipped to the other side for the second gift I wrapped), and simple tags that kept with the same white-on-black circle design of the other gifts, but included only a name and a short handwritten message.
• [for my brother] also a mash-up of two Ikea pages.  One of them had a quote relating to something about having a lot of things not meaning as much as making the most of life, which I thought was appropriate for him since he has a big heart for social justice and is serving at an urban missions organization this year.  The other was just a random page in monochrome colors, which I arranged so that you could see a little of it on top, as a sort of “pop” of interest.  Tied up on the diagonal with a red grosgrain ribbon, and with a color-coordinating tag. (That’s supposed to be a Christmas star on the gift tag, but it ended up looking more like a compass, or even a strange sort of cross-with-draped-vestments from far away . . . )

Finally, I did bake over the break, too.  Lime meltaways (which I royally screwed up somehow and turned into flat, little pancakes of cookies instead of tender, melting rounds with a bit of body to them . . .  fortunately they ended up tasting good and I was at a loss when my grandmother asked for the recipe because I didn’t know what I’d done “wrong” to make them turn out that way; I eventually gave her the original recipe), and a gingerbread bundt cake (gingerbread baked in my mother’s bundt pan), which D and I made together one afternoon.  I didn’t take pictures of the weird lime-meltaways-turned-soft-crackers, but I do have a photo of the cake, which I’ll leave you with:

Still trying to figure out how to make it more moist, but this version was pretty good! I like this recipe because it uses fresh ginger, which you can really taste in the finished product. I think it baked up more dry this time because of the added surface area of the pan and the change of oven. I may also have added extra molasses last time, but I can’t really remember. I’ll have to fiddle around with it next time (this time we made it true to proportions).

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Holiday Prep 2010 (and a gift to you)

How much more uncreative can I get with a title?  Oh well; I couldn’t figure out a more stylish way to describe the contents of this post.

I usually like to give small packages of baked goods and other edibles to people in my life that I want to thank during the holiday season.  Thankfully, my finals week was not particularly horrific this year, and so I had time and space to bake before leaving school for the break.  Taking inspiration from The Gifted Blog, I decided to try and make my wrappings a little classier (and more economical) than they were last year.  I used only things I had in the house already, with the exception of a secondhand cookie tin that I bought at the Salvation Army for about $0.75, scrubbed out thoroughly, and then used to package sweets.  Here they are

Gift #1 is actually neither edible, nor a thank-you gift.  It is an Angel Tree gift:

My friend R and I picked a tag off the tree at church and bought our present together.  Since she drove us to the store, I volunteered to wrap it.  Since the tag (which had a purple satin ribbon and is not in the picture for reasons of privacy) needed to be attached to the top of the gift, I made a paper purple paper rose to match, and went with an overall silver-gold-ivory theme for the ribbon and paper.  I gave the rose a touch of sparkle at the edges of its petals using metallic prismacolor pencils, then sealed it with Mod Podge, and wired it onto the ribbon.  The tag was slipped in under the ribbon just before I brought it back to the church.  The ribbon is actually salvaged from a birthday gift that someone gave me in September, and the paper is from a roll that I originally bought to wrap wedding presents (I make a point of never buying paper that is appropriate to only one type of occasion).  I was pleased with myself for having the idea to criscross the stripes on the top package with the ones on the bottom.  I think it adds a little visual interest.

Gift #2 is a gift for R, who gives me a ride to church every week:

I made her Nigella’s pistachio fudge (which actually ended up becoming almond-pistachio fudge because I did not have enough pistachios).  The box is actually a recycled ham container (I began saving the boxes our lunchmeat is sold in back in November, and used another one of them to package some cookies I made for the friend who drives me to bible study — unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take a picture of that gift before giving it). You might also recognize the twine from last year’s Valentine’s day gifts; I have actually quite loved the rustic touch that it adds, and have used it on a lot of baked-good-gifts since.  I’m almost at the end of the roll.  The tag was made with a flocked tree that I cut out of a piece of scrapbook paper, mounted on kraft paper (which was itself salvaged from inside a roll of wrapping paper) and glued onto a rectangle cut from the back of one of last year’s Christmas cards (they came in a pack; it was one of the cheesy ones I didn’t end up using).

Gift #3 was for my advisor and his family:

Not particularly pretty, but I wanted to show off the tags, which were cut from circles of ivory cardstock and the cut-off bits of trees at the edge of the same paper I used to make R’s tag (one above).  Starting at the RH most side of the picture and going around clockwise, there are: linzer cookies filled with raspberry jam (I forgot to take a picture, but I made some of them into fun Christmas shapes to amuse his kids), fudge, and a small loaf of pumpkin-cranberry gingerbread.  The linzers are packed into an old, washed-out mushroom carton. I tried to use a gathered-curling-ribbon technique I’d seen in Real Simple, but I think my ribbon was a bit too broad, and it didn’t come out quite as I’d envisioned it. Nevertheless, I stacked everything into a gift bag with a snowman in it and slipped in a card, and it ended up looking tidy enough to be presentable.

Gift #4 was for our department’s administrative assistant. First, an interior view:

Fudge, Linzer Cookies, and Simply Recipes’ orange poppyseed cookies. Wrapped up in tissue paper with parchment circle linings to prevent oils from soaking through the tissue.

Exterior:

Closeup of the Bow:

Packaged in a secondhand cookie tin that I scrubbed out and gave new life to, with two kinds of satin ribbon, and a matching tag made with remnants of the same card I used for the backing of R’s gift tag, silver origami paper, and light blue cardstock.

Finally, Gift #5, which is a redo of something I did last year:

I made little paper sleeves with holiday greetings for individual Ghirardelli chocolate squares, and left them in my classmates’ mailboxes. This year, though, I expedited the process by drawing and layout out everything on my computer first. I then just printed the sleeves on the color printer at the library, sliced them up using a paper cutter, filled in the “to” and “from” on each tag, and taped it around a square of candy.

And here is my gift to you – a printable .pdf document with the same sleeves that I used. Feel free to print, cut out, and use them for your own personal projects (they are made to fit around a Ghirardelli chocolate square, but could probably also be wrapped around other candies):

Winter Penguin Candy Sleeves (Adobe .PDF)

I’ll be back later with a room decor update, and hopefully some photos of the Christmas gifts I plan to make while at home. For now, though, it’s off to do some more work on my thesis. (It really never ends, does it?)

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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Look, I Crafted!

Despite my utterly INSANE schedule, I took some time off last Sunday to craft and recharge.

Front:

Back:

Three Ways to Wear:

Hair

Hat

Lapel

I cut up several layers of red craft felt freehand and sewed them together at the center with a cluster of French knots. I used a felt loop at the back instead of sewing on a pinback so I can switch it out for a bobby pin if I want to. I’m since realizing that felt was not a good choice of material for the loop, as after one day of hat wear the pin is already starting to tear through the thin fibers of the craft felt. Maybe if I have time later this semester (ha! time, what’s that?) I’ll replace it with a ribbon.

I should totally be at the library right now. I have a term paper to write, a reading next week for which need to do major revision, and mounds of tasks to complete before the magazine launch (that unfinished web site code is having a staring contest with me). But here I am, blogging. Oh, well.

On an unrelated note, I have been thinking about Christmas (already!). I am definitely going to do some element of handmade this year, as usual, though less than I did last year, as I just haven’t got the time. Cookies for administrators and people who drive me places. Maybe using these cute boxes in the kraft brown color if I can convince myself to spring for them (alternately, I could be a cheapskate and start saving empty ziplock-box-style ham containers since we go through one every couple of weeks). Jewelry will likely be my route again for my girl friends. I plan to use a lot of deconstructed thrifted elements to save myself money and be a little ecofriendly this year. Am glad that Christmas season stuff is starting to pop up on blogs (I won’t get into my extreme dislike/phobia of Halloween related stuff but suffice it to say I’m relieved when November rolls around every year). Found an AWESOME tutorial for Ramen Wrapper Ribbons on The Gifted Blog today. Am wondering how well it would work with How About Orange‘s lovely Magazine Gift Bow Tutorial, which I have also been longing to try out.

Finally, a piece of not-so-fun news: after an unfortunate incident involving the toilet paper spindle earlier this week, our upstairs toilet needs to be replaced (probably the toilet paper spindle, too). Ack. Everything in this apartment is falling apart. At least it’s not the water heater this time. Thank God that we have a second toilet.

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