3 "Quick" Holiday Crafts

So over a few days I had to whip out some crafts as gifts or just for general decoration. Here are three things I made in various levels of easy and how you can do it to!

I found some paper that looked nice at the store. Ran it through a tag die-cut and TADA! I accidentally made a really nice tag with the tiny "love" on it. I added a nice red ribbon and now it's a tree ornament. Inked the edges because it's me.

This next one is sort of a silly level of easy... I took a pipe cleaner and made a circle.

 I added some glue (glossy accents here) and some glitter. I then tossed it around in a bag to remove excess.

 Then I added a little ribbon, a dot of hot glue that I painted and added a pin back. TADA! It's a really REALLY easy festive lapel.

This next one isn't quite AS easy, but the components are really simple and it LOOKS really hard, making it a pretty cool gift for someone needing some wall or office decor. Here is the front:

This was literally made from scraps and things I had laying around (the bottle cap was removed from the soda I was drinking while making this...). Take a burlap panel (any craft store has something like this) and then start laying things on it to see how the space works out. After I decided where everything was going, I cut and inked paper to fill the space nicely. The top right is a "found relatives" card from Tim Holtz (not actually someone I know... that would be creepy. Or is this creepier?). I think my favorite parts of this design are the bottle cap that I added alcohol ink to for an aged effect and the key that is glued down, but "taped on" with tissue tape that I have recently become obsessed with.

I also had some other scraps and stamp samples laying around, so I used them to make a nice baking for the project. It's very "Steve."

This project took about an hour and half after I figured out what I wanted to do and rearranged everything a million times. It doesn't help that my craft space is a wreck. Sigh... Maybe in the new year I will do a "craft space before and after" post. Get excited! Or scared...

-Steve

12 Tags of 2014 - December!

So my resolution for 2015 is to do all of the tag challenges over at Tim Holt's Blog. But before I get excited about what is to come, I wanted to share my creation this month!

As usual, I was lacking some of the items (but some are really cheap it seems so I will invest soon), but I took the best of it and made it work. First, here is Tim's creation. Definitely go check out the tutorial to see how he made this awesome tag (I'm a fan of the green version he made too):

Holiday Configurations Book (a Gift)

Tis the season to accidentally decide to make really complicated gifts for all of your friends! Yay! So with late hours and lots of ink and glitter stuck to me, people will be getting all sorts of fun things this holiday season.

One bigger project this season was this configurations box. I used paper, tape, and then whatever I had laying around to fill the spaces. There are some views and commentary on the book after the jump: