This year was a Christmas filled with handmade gifts, which happens to be my favorite kind of gift. I made a lot of gifts to give this year as well as received plenty of fantastic handmade gifts. Before the year ends, I’d like to share with you some of those wonderful handmade gifts from the season.
This Christmas season I participated in two holiday exchanges. One exchange was between some of us Rhett and Link fans on the Kommunity Facebook page. The other exchange was one I found online for exchanging handmade Christmas ornaments at the Blu Penny by Cindy Ann blog.
That’s me showing off the awesome Rhett and Link patch and cute handmade t-shirt that I got from a fellow Mythical Beast, Robin.
These are the magnets that I made for the recipient, Rene, of my Rhett and Link exchange gifts. Rene is also a Green Bay Packers fan so I made him a Packers magnet along with the Rhett and Link Mythical Magnets. He made a video on Youtube showing my mangets that I sent to him.
I love handmade gifts and ornaments, so when I discovered the Handmade Holiday Ornament Gift Exchange at the Blu Penny blog, I was excited to sign up. The photo above shows the three ornaments that I received in the exchange.
These are the Gingerbread Boy ornaments that I sent out as my handmade ornament for the exchange. I packaged each of them in colorful circle pattern treat bags and then packed them into boxes to travel to their destinations.
I also gave Traci and Mary at the Scrapbook Cottage each a Gingerbread Boy ornament. When I stopped in to give them their ornaments, Mary gave me this adorable handmade treat bag filled with delicious Dove chocolates.
And I could not leave out one of the “handmade gift queens” that I have been blessed to know. She is my “Glitter Gal” kindred friend, Caroline. She sent me a second delightful package for Christmas which contained some of her delicious Gingerbread cookies along with the recipe, some spiced cider mix and a cute handmade Gingerbread boy pin/card. Yes, I did say “second” package, I will have to devote a separate blog post to her first package that she sent to me.
Since this blog post has a handmade and Gingerbread theme, I could not pass up sharing a photo of the cute handmade Gingerbread people that my nieces and nephew decorated this year. Can you guess which Gingerbread cookie was decorated by my 3 year old nephew?
One last item that I’d like to share is a photo of a handmade project that I made when I was in grade school. It’s made from burlap, felt and yarn and I’m glad my mom saved it and made it into a pillow. I only wish I knew what year I made it. I think I might have been in forth or fifth grade.
I hope you enjoyed my Handmade Holiday post which is the last post of the year 2011. Happy New Year!
They are so fun and easy to make. Also, a very addicting cozy weekend activity. Thank goodness the kit offered plenty of supplies to create a lot of ornaments. As I was putting together one ornament, I began to think of other color combinations and designs to create. It was also enjoyable to see what designs my nieces and nephew thought of.
The photo above shows our collection of ornaments that we all made during the weekend.
The photos above are the ornaments that my niece Katrina created. The last two photos show the front and back of the second ornament that she made. I like her patchwork of colors all over the ornament. She also added more than one bead to the pins to give it a different look. I also like her orange and green ornament. Lovely!
This is the ornament that my nephew Jordan designed. He was reluctant to make ornaments with us because they probably looked too “girly” with the sparkly sequins. After seeing us working on them, he decided to give it a shot. Since he is a Chicago Bears fan he made his ornament in the team colors of blue and orange. He did a terrific job on his striped ornament.
This is the three piece ornament that my niece Kristin created. Isn’t it pretty? Kristin loves sparkles and crafting just like me. We are crafting buddies!
The stand that the ornaments are displayed on is a wire and bead stand that I made. It makes a nice stand for our ornaments. Love the sparkle!
The other day I 
I decided to glitter the snowflakes with some glitter from the 
I used a small, old paintbrush to brush the adhesive on in sections. Then I used a glittering spoon to sprinkle the respective glitter colors onto the snowflakes.
For the snowflake above I used the Indian Summer vintage glass glitter and the Shiney Si ultrafine opaque glitter (one of my all time favorite colors, it’s so sparkly!). I also used Shiney Si on the snowflake shown below and T-Bird ultrafine pearlescent color.
Next time you’re out shopping and you see some ugly ornaments hanging out in the clearance section, maybe you can give them their very own sparkle treatment and breathe some new life into them. Happy glittering! Hope you enjoyed the snowflake project!
I took the photo above with a lens of the holiday specs in front of my camera lens. It’s hard to decipher the shapes from this photo, but you can see how the glasses work a little bit.
The Christmas Carolers in the gazebo at the park.
There were also Christmas lights set to music in one spot at the park. We stopped to watch the light show and then headed back home. It was a fun night visiting the park during the holiday season!
I’ve also created “Bagel Babe” Penguins for my bagel loving friends where the penguins were each holding a little brown bag with a bagel image on it. They also were holding little purses. These penguins were created before I was introduced to 
You can find the Playful Penguin sculptures shown below at my 
Aside from working on magazine projects, I’ve also been busy working on making Christmas gifts for my two sisters. I’m also working on a special order for a giraffe sculpture. Hopefully I will get a chance to blog about some of my current projects in the next month or two.
My 
My snowflakes finally begin to get some color added to them.
A snowflake character donning ear muffs and a scarf. Who knew that snowflakes ever got chilly?
The photo above shows a up close look at the knitted hat for my snowflake character.
It’s my little watercolor corner of the world. My watercolor workspace! There’s my palette and watercolor board with watercolor paper taped to the boards. My little “test” sheet of paper to see how strong the watercolor looks before applying it to my actual image. I guess that’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed looking into my studio at the current artwork I’ve been creating. Talk to you later!
Snowflakes in summer, oh my! Right now I’m working on a series of watercolor snowflake characters. The photos of the snowflakes above are an assortment of cutout paper snowflakes that I used for my snowflake patterns for my characters. In the middle of summertime there I was cutting out a handful of snowflakes. After I had all of my snowflake characters drawn out on my watercolor paper, I taped down the paper to my watercolor boards. Then I carefully applied masking fluid to the outside edges of the snowflakes.
The photo above shows the masking fluid after it was dry. Using the fluid allowed me to work on watercoloring the background more efficiently and helped to keep the edges of the snowflakes in shape.
Here I am removing the masking fluid from the piece with my polka-dotted eraser and my finger tips. Wow! That masking fluid is stubborn stuff, my finger tips were getting red from rubbing off the masking material. I also tried using a kneaded eraser to remove it. I just wanted to be careful not to damage the surface of the paper as I removed the masking fluid with the erasers.
Here’s a close-up look at one of my snowflake characters with some of the masking fluid already removed. I hope you enjoyed your visit. Stay tuned for an 
An artist who aspires to become a children's book illustrator. Stays young at heart and an avid daydreamer. When the weather permits, I enjoy visiting/biking on the nature trail near my house. Visiting the trail has brought me many hours of enjoyment and relaxation. My camera is usually by my side while on the trail. I like to try to find the small and unnoticeable as subjects for my photos. And of course flowers and plant life encompass many of my subjects.
