As one friend suggested, last November/ December I think I was experiencing the crafty version of "nesting" prior to the birth of Miss 1. Last year I made a significant percentage of our Christmas presents including some button fridge magnets, fabric covered noticeboards and fabric book covers. These are all fairly easy projects. As long as you have some nice looking fabric, even the most amateur sew-er/ craft-er can make these look effective.
I had big plans this year to make most of our Christmas presents. Unfortunately, not being pregnant this time around, the crafting instinct hasn't quite kicked in. I still haven't used the sewing machine that is poised on my desk.
Here are a couple of simple ideas I have managed to follow-through with:
1) Salt-dough Christmas decorations
These seem to be all the rage this year. Lisa shared the recipe for salt-dough on Life on a Hill awhile ago. We made a couple of batches of decorations to give as presents for the ladies who look after the kids during Wednesday Bible study. (I finished them with a poly-urethene gloss varnish to help them last longer)
I kept some of the rejects (the ones with big cracks or the "puffy" ones). I love the way they look on this small branch.
2) Hand Print Christmas Trees
This is what they were supposed to look like:
By the time we had all our hand prints on paper, they did not resemble a tree AT ALL. I decided to cut the hand prints out in the shape of a tree and glue on to some Christmas paper. The result:
These will make nice presents for our grandmothers/ kids' great-grandmothers.
3) Christmas Biscuits
I posted our favourite Christmas biscuit recipe last week. We had no lemon juice when making the second 2 batches, so I substituted with orange juice for the glaze icing. Obviously a little sweeter, but still yummy.
We added our family Christmas card on the front and gave these to our neighbours and a few other people who have cared for our kids at church etc throughout the year. (I made the card using www.picnik.com for free and had each card printed for the cost of a normal photo - this was after discovering it would cost $1.40+ per card to make cards through www.snapfish.com. Snapfish have beautiful cards, but I couldn't justify paying that much!)
Have you been getting crafty this Christmas? Do you have actual crafty skills?
