Get crafty for Christmas!

Hi there everyone!  Another week has passed by and it gets closer to Christmas by the day!  With that in mind, I decided to make something that could be given as a gift and created this gift set...

 

The contents are a bottle of Shower Gel and face cloth, which I bought for a total of 35p!!  I created the desk caddy using this template, which is available to download here...I then decorated with brown card panels on the front and back, and embossed 2 strips of card using the woodgrain folder from Craft Concepts, inked with Rusty Hinge and Walnut Distress Inks and wrapped around the box and face cloth.  I cut a piece of light card to cover the label of the shower gel, embossed and inked, then attached using glue - I decorated with the anchor and skull medallion, from the pirate range on the Boys2Men disc.  After wrapping the whole thing with cellophane, it looked more than 35p worth of product - what do you think?

It would be ideal if you know someone who likes different brands of products, so you could coordinate them into a gift set.

 I've made 2 templates, one for this smaller desk caddy/gift box and one for a larger version...you could always add dividers and use them as desk caddies, or whatever you like, I just thought it was a good way to make your money go further, by making it look like a gift set rather than separate products.

(NOTE: set the page scaling to 'None' in Adobe Reader before sending to print)

Next, I saw a fantastic halloween door hanger over at Lily's Art Creations and was inspired, but wanted to incorporate one of the Boys2Men images and came up with this...

To get the robot so big, I opened the robot topper sheet, then using my snapshot tool, highlighted all the pieces labelled 'A' then clciked print - I made sure my paper size was set to A4, that the Auto rotate and centre box was checked and that the page scaling was set to 'Fit to Printable area', this gives you the robot and all the decoupage layers scaled to fit the page.  I made the sign using a piece of card embossed with woodgrain and inked with Walnut, then cut out the name using a Sissix alphabet die set and the word room was silver peel off letters.  I attached to the robot by puching holes in the last decoupage layer of the robot's feet and along the top of the sign, then connected using jump rings.

I think it would make a nice personalised gift if put in a box and decorated with the robot image - might do that later!

With Christmas getting ever more expensive and purse strings getting tighter, I think we should be making more gifts for people, to try and make it more personal - my brother and sister-in-law made our presents last year, and they were fantastic, they made homemade jam, sloe gin and cookies and I got a handmade apron, which was made from bright orange flame material and orange netting trim, it was amazing!