Christmas Gift Crafting

I'm just back from Canada and fighting jet lag - I think it's much harder in the winter when these dark grey days make staying in bed seem like a great idea!  But I had a really lovely Christmas with my brothers and sisters and their families - and a few jet lagged days is a small price to pay.

This year I wanted to make most of my presents - and I'm happy to say I was pretty successful.  Of course, me being me, despite starting well in advance I still ended up doing finishing touches on Christmas Eve!  But the gifts were all well received and definitely worth the effort.

FAMILY CUSHIONS

For each of my brothers and sisters I made one of these family cushions (I put cushions in before I gave them!) - and I was so pleased with how they turned out.  

I designed the name collage in the Cricut Craft Room and then cut it out in Silhouette heat transfer flocking.  

I was pretty excited when I discovered this stuff - as until then I had no idea how I was going to use the collage!  The flocking is on a transfer sheet, so as long as you remember to flip your image before cutting the rest is reasonably straight forward.  

I ironed the flocking on to the felt (this took longer than I thought it would!), sewed up the seams and then finished the cushions with large co-ordinating buttons.

PERSONALISED FRAME

My niece Sarah and her boyfriend Ryan  have just bought their first home so I designed and decorated this frame for them. (Freddy is the cutest dog in the world!) 

I started with a plain frame that I painted a lovely shade of blue.  I cut the words out in vinyl - again using Cricut Craft Room for the design work...

and then stuck them on to the frame.

I painted the front of the frame (covering the vinyl) with a pale mushroom colour and then used a stencil to add the blue and pink dots. I finished it off by stencilling on a few flowers in gold.  (The paints I used were Eco Green Paints which come in beautiful colours.  They are my favourite acrylic paints at the moment!)

When the paint was dry I carefully removed the vinyl exposing the dark blue paint underneath.

SCRAPBOOK PAGES

For my niece Dylann I made a scrapbook page in Craft Artist using a photo of her and my father which has always been one of my favourites.  To me it looks like he's a 1930's con man, and she's a little lost orphan who has attached herself to him -- in a film you know by the final scene she'd have won his heart forever.

I used the same technique I used for Sarah's frame to decorate this one.  

This final (non-knitted!) gift was for my best friend and her family -- who have been building gingerbread houses with me for 21 years. I made the scrapbook page in Craft Artist and printed it on photo paper.

I painted the frame gold, and then added the vinyl lettering (once again, designed and cut from the Cricut Craft Room).  I added six (six!) layers of ultra-thick embossing powder.  I stamped into the final layer while it was still hot and then added a thin layer of crafty notions gleam - because I love the stuff!

 I also knit up some gifts - but I'll post about those on my knitting blog another day!