Moral of the story: the holidays are the time of year when I have the best chance to use my creative energy to express my love and appreciation for my friends and family. Part of how this expresses itself is in finding how bits of my current environment remind me of my loved-ones, which then inspires me to incorporate that piece into a gift for them. For me, believe it or not, this sometimes comes in the form of a bowl made out of newspaper (paper mache) with a newsprint photo of my brother's favorite soccer player in the middle... or how the pressed flowers my significant other gave me for my birthday last year can be backed with nice paper and put into a frame or into a book of favorite memories of us together... It reminds them, and me, that everywhere I go I am surrounded by things that make me think of them...
Well, in preparation for the holiday gift-giving season I started getting crafty back in August, but I'm still scrambling a bit. I've developed a pattern over the last few years...each year has a theme. Some examples include the years of: knitting/crochet, paper mache, hand-made jewelery, home made paper, mix cds/tapes, collages, and then there was that one year I felt less than inspired which was the year of gift certificate cards (probably by far the favorite of my brothers, to be honest).
This year is definitely a mishmash (is that honestly a word?) of each of these years' endeavors.
Here are three of the things I've been working on, but shhh...if you know any of my family/friends--don't tell them. Don't want to ruin the surprise. :)
1. The Sister: A butterfly chain
For whatever reason, I always associate my sister with butterflies. A boyfriend in college made her a large hand-made twisted metal butterfly necklace which I thought was the most stellar piece of jewelery ever created. Maybe that's where it started...who knows. So this year I cut out of cereal boxes about 10 thin cardboard butterflies of varying shapes and sizes. I painted each one with different colors (I found a bunch of old acryllic paints on the side of the road--I think the family was moving or something) and patterns. Some had stars, others had spots, and the rest were stripes or random blobs to cover up deformed stars and ugly spots. So then I lined them up in a vertical column and using needle and thread, stitched the bottom wings to the top wings of the next butterfly leaving about 2 inches of thread between each one and adding little beads the length of the thread. In the end I had a unique, colorful chain of butterflies to hang on the wall. :)
2. Friends: Scrap Yarn scarves
Well. I'm not too great at that whole crochet thing...I enjoy it...but it's not my forte. So, you may imagine the idea of trying to mix different colored yarns together out of scraps to make a full length scarf was just NOT realistic...so I improvised... Using the medium balls left over from old projects I crocheted about the length of half a scarf, added the fringe, and then sewed big wooden and fake mother of pearl buttons (I found them in my mom's storage room) on towards the other end so there was just enough to wrap around the neck and button so it would stay put. The fringed end just hangs down like a normal scarf. This way, I use up the rest of those balls of yarn, but don't have to try to match colors or textures or figure out how to switch colors in the middle of a row. :)
3. The Sweetheart: collage
I spent the semester after I graduated college in China with my sweetheart. We traveled all over the place, went to museums, national parks, movies, local musical and artistic events...etc Being the sentimental/pack-rat type, I saved just about every ticket stub, plane ticket, receipt and program I ever picked up along the way. And since I have a hard time getting rid of them--especially after associating all those little torn, bent pieces of paper with the memories, it's even more difficult to let go despite the cluttered vibe they give to my living space several months later. So. This past weekend I gathered them from every corner, drawer and box in my room and laid them out on a large piece of cardboard that served as the backing to an old frame left by prior housemates--cutting them to fit nicely with one another. With this background, I went back and added photos from different trips throughout the semester. It was a relief to condense all those memories into one 2 x 1.5 ft piece of framed cardboard that I can give as a gift to hang on the wall as opposed to shoving in a box to the back of my closet. :)
I don't know... does this count as re-gifting? :P
Jingles. :)
~Julia.
