Christmas | Artful Adventures

It is only one week until Christmas! It has been a whirl of craftiness in my home. My husband recently noted than my crafting had begun to creep from my craft room to the dining room table, to the kitchen counter, to the kitchen island, and now it has crept into another nook that has become a sewing/ironing area. I simply told him I am trying to get full use of our home. Those places didn’t even include the place I took over while making cards in the family room, while watching Hallmark channel Christmas movies. Thank goodness he has his own man cave, and really doesn’t care how much room I am using. He is simply happy that I’m USING products and tools.

There is still a lot to do, but I am enjoying the journey. I appreciate some of my crafty friends, and their love of creating decor as well as gifts! Thank goodness for the internet and the ability to connect with so many crafters! The one problem with that, is the fact that we have the opportunity to come across more ideas than we can ever execute. Yet when we have a number of ideas floating in our sub-conscience, there is no end to the new ideas we might come up with!

Proud daughter in candy cane apron.

I decided to make some holiday aprons to have on hand when all the family arrives. I’m sure we will have to eat and will be in the kitchen. I recently bought a new sewing machine, and decided that some aprons would be just the thing to start with the get the feel of the new machine. After years of not sewing anything for my kids, because it just wasn’t cool to have anything homemade, you can image my surprise when my youngest daughter expressed how happy she was with “her” apron! I almost fell over! This was a photo she wanted me to take and she shared on social media. I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it was to have one of my kids actually appreciate something I sewed. I guess that is just another difference in having adult children!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Welcome back to the Make It Monday blog circle. You may be starting here, or you may have come from Jen Wright Designs and seen her fabulous Christmas template and freebie she shared today. Continue through this post and find out who is next in the circle.

Gift wrapping. I would venture to say that you either love it or hate it. Personally, I love creating a beautifully wrapped gift! A friend once told me that when she first got married, they lived in the small hometown of her husband. There was a store in town that wrapped gifts in the most beautiful way, and when you received one of these gifts, you felt special before you ever even opened the gift. We use to laugh that it could have been rocks and you would have loved them, because they had been presented in such a fabulous fashion!

You may be among the many people who have moved to just putting your presents in a gift bag, and just calling it complete! No doubt, gift bags have really taken the stress out of wrapping presents these days. They are quick and easy, and you can add a variety of ribbons or fibers to create an even more festive look, if you want to. However, a gift bag and some tissue is all it takes to get the job done.

Wouldn’t it be great to have some gift bags on hand, that would fit any occasion? How about keeping some plain bags on-hand, and then decorating them as needed — hand decorating them. Don’t roll your eyes at me! Hear me out.

Items to consider:

You don’t have to be an “artist” to accomplish this!
Hand designed items are often more expensive than other items, and you can create your own!
You could decorate bags as needed, making them unique to the occasion.
You can use simple shapes and line art.
Few supplies are needed.

decorative gift bag with holly and berries

Grab a plain gift bag and a paint marker! The Gold Pen-touch markers are fabulous!

I never really thought about doing this until I had taken Joanne Sharpe’s free 5 Golden Letterings online class, which I told you about recently. Even then, I didn’t have a plan. Then the day came…. Christmas. It was one of those days where plans changed faster than you could figure out what was going on. Suddenly, we had someone who still hadn’t wrapped her gifts needing to make about a two hour round trip to bring a family member to our celebration. Her husband went home and got the gifts, and brought them to our house to get help with wrapping. Larger items were wrapped with paper from rolls, and then….. I suddenly remembered the idea of hand decorating gift bags! Okay, I may have thought about it before, because I had a pack of kraft colored medium gift bags. I pulled them out, grabbed a gold and a white paint pen, and got busy. The extent of this endeavor was writing “Happy Holidays,” or a quick bunch of holly leaves with some berries, a Christmas tree shape, a couple of bells with a bow at the top, etc. My images looked like they came from a coloring book, just simple line art. I believe some of the bags were decorated with random shapes and patterns, fast and easy.

How did they turn out? Let’s just say, some people are easily impressed. I noticed that those bags made a return visit last Christmas.

hand decorated gift bag, with greeting and Christmas tree.

Simple and effective!

Think how some red glitter glue could jazz up these berries!

hand decorated gift bag with Christmas tree

Look how this crazy simple tree even looks “elegant” in gold on this black bag!

Obviously, you may not always have the correct sized gift bag on hand, but to have some that would fit many small things could be a life saver. “Happy Birthday,” or some balloons would be sufficient for a birthday bag; or even zig-zags or spiral patterns. I hope you’ll give this a try! You’ll also love the money you’ll save! I just bought a pack of 13 medium gift bags from my craft store, and used a 50% off coupon, which made the bags cost about 27 cent each.