The holidays are over.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday season. Having celebrated my husbands birthday which is in February, I came to the realisation that the holiday season is well and truly over, and it's time to get back to work. I have been a very busy beaver these last few months. Among friends and family, we decided to try a hand-made Christmas. Rather than spending loads of money on gifts, we crafted our little hearts out making lots of presents for everyone we know. Not everyone thinks they are creative, but when the push comes to shove, all the presents I received from the crafty and non-crafty people were thoughtful, innovative, and lots of fun.

Among some of the things I made was a little box frame collage for a good friend who once told me that everyone needs a little whimsy in life. The photograph below doesn't really show the depth of the piece, but the text is made from pearly card stock with pink thread sewn on the sewing machine, and is adhered with thick double sided tape so that it has a three dimensional effect.

Another one of the gifts I made was a little note book. I have a collection of vintage Golden books which my son and I love, but some are a little politically incorrect and very much a product of their time. This one had some beautiful illustrations though, and was titled 'The Glad Book'. I took the book apart, kept a few of the prettier illustrations, and cut some pages of coloured paper and graph paper to size. I reorganised the pages, and stapled the covers back on, using some fabric tape to reseal the binding where the golden book binding usually is.

I was stumped when it came to another of my friends. He likes art and architecture, and while I was looking at some photographs I had taken on a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York a few years ago, I stumbled upon these. I had been so inspired by the building as much as its contents, that I photographed elements of the architecture, including these three images of the ceiling at different parts of the building. I altered the colours of the images so that instead of being black and white, they had a blue, teal and purple hue, making them pop. I then mounted and framed them. Voila!

Among some of the other things I made were a black cushion with the word 'Meh' appliquéd on the front in white; a t-shirt with the slogan 'IRONY: The opposite of wrinkly' which I saw somewhere but don't know who to attribute it to; A massive (store bought) mug, personalised by printing onto it with stamps and ceramic paint; another cushion made of the most awesome moustache fabric; and a white singlet t-shirt that I covered in grey paint splatter. Naturally I was so excited about the gifts that I forgot to take photographs of them to post here, so once I have chased everyone down for pictures I'll post them here.

I also got busy taking photos of my son dressed up in tinsel, and a few of him sitting in a basket on the beach with some letters in the sand spelling XMAS. I sewed the photos to some cards made of various pieces of card stock, and some holiday greetings typed out onto white paper with my vintage typewriter, and glued to the card. They turned out better than expected, so I'll chase them down and post some photos here too.

I'm still working on the rose painting, as well as a few other little projects now too. I can't wait to finish them so I can post them here. I might pop up a few progress shots soon too.

Enough blabbing. Back to work!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.