My gifts this year...

Since I've been about of work since June and my freelance hasn't picked up liked I had hoped, I decided it would be economical for myself (and giving support to my local craft stores) by making a lot of homemade gifts this year. and I just wanted to share of few of my gift ideas with you. Well they're not really "my ideas" but they are the gifts I'm giving to some of my family.

The paper trees and stamped candles I made were found on a tutorial on splitcoaststampers.com. The trees take a lot of double sided paper (something i've had a hard time finding at the local craft stores. They don't like to carry the thicker double sided brands of xmas paper I guess!) and a lot of time.

I'm also altering a photo album for my husbands aunt, who doesn't have any wedding photos of us yet, so I'm decorating the outside a little and making simple decorative pages to correspond with the photos. This is just the start of the project.

One other thing I did (but I can't show you because its already wrapped! silly me!) is I made a dust cover for my MIL's cricut machine. I found a template at customcrops.com and I bought some fabric and let me just say, I am not the greatest sewer, but it turned out really great! After the holidays I'll have to take a picture of it and show you all.

I hope this inspires all of you for the holidays! Handmade/homemade doesn't have to be boring!