Now that I’m back home from my travels, all tuckered out by family and friends, I thought I’d share with you all the gifts I made. Over the next several weeks, I’ll share tutorials for these projects, but for now I just wanted to show you what I made. The best thing about these gifts is that none of them are holiday specific! As I write the tutorials, I’ll go back and link them up here so that you have one easy place to view them all. For now, you’ll see lots of tutorial links that are ‘coming soon’.
Homemade Extracts
I thought I would start with these since I already teased them to you earlier. This is what we put in those fabric bowls I made back in November. We had a lot of fun making the extracts, and they were really simple to make. We also designed the labels ourselves, which I’ll talk more about in a later post. The three extracts are cinnamon, coconut, and vanilla. They seemed to go over pretty well, and we even have a set left over for ourselves!
Fabric bowl tutorial
Extract tutorial (coming soon)
Label tutorial (coming soon)
Handmade Blanket
I really liked making this blanket, because it was warm on my lap as I stitched the border. The cloth is an 80/20 wool/polyester blend that Earl picked out at SR Harris for his sister. It was nice and warm in my lap, and our cat adopted the blanket for a while while I worked on it.
Blanket tutorial (coming soon)
Chain Mail Key Chains
I cannot count how many of these we made, especially the flowers. In the end, we had quite a few “We should have gotten them something!” moments (or even just, it’s Christmas, we’re going to see you, so we made you something). The flowers were really easy and after a while we could make one in about 15 minutes. The dragons were a little difficult at first, but once we got the hang of it, they weren’t too bad. Neither pattern is my own, so I’ll just link to the sources below.
Chain mail flower pattern from The Ring Lord
Dragon Keychain Tutorial by Derailed on M.A.I.L.
Pearl Ball Necklace
You’ve already seen the tutorial for this, but it was a present we made, so it gets to show up here too. :) We made two of these sets, and they seemed to go over really well. The magnetic clasp in the back was a big hit!
Etched Pyrex Pans
I think these were one of my favorite gifts to give. I tried to etch around the corners, and it was a total failure. Bonus: we got the failure pan! Each person’s pan has a different design on it, which is especially important since two of the pans were for people with the same last name. I really like how these came out and can’t wait to make more personalized bakeware!
Etched pan tutorial (coming soon)
Stained Glass Candles
I really like these candles and have decided to make another one for myself. I would love to see how the butterflies look with the flame behind them.
Stained Glass Candle Tutorial (coming soon)
Smaug
I didn’t make Smaug as a gift for me to give, but it was still a gift I made, so I wanted to add it here. No tutorial for this one, but you can read about the process here and here. Dragons make me happy. :)
There are a few other things that I made that I don’t have pictures of. I finished up the O.W.L. mitts for my friend. She’ll get those tomorrow, at which point her hands will be toasty warm. I also made some shadow puppets, a personalized bag, and a memory/color learning game for a friend’s children. The lack of pictures may or may not have to do with the uncompleted nature of those last two projects. We’re meeting up for gifts sometime next week though, so I figure that’s ok!
I hope you’ve enjoyed my gift roundup. Look forward to those tutorials in the upcoming weeks! Which gift was your favorite? I know my mom spent the entire time I was there eyeing the key chains we were making with jealousy (she did end up getting one, no worries). I hope you had a great Christmas and New Years!
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