Holiday Gifts & Gift Baskets Blog

Archive for the ‘Christmas Holiday’ Category

Now that the digital age is upon us, most people have become shutterbugs. It’s so much fun to click and share your photos right away. If you’ve just purchased or received a digital camera or you want to know how to get professional-looking holiday photographs this season, read on.

If you’re planning on taking a holiday Christmas card photo of the kids this year, plan early. Yes, you’ll have to buy their Christmas outfits ahead of time, but it will be worth it. No later than November, have your children dress in their holiday finery. Make sure you choose a time for your photo shoot that works for small children. If it’s just before nap time, you’re not going to get the best shots. Pick a time, like after lunch, when everyone’s happy and content.

Set up an area for your shot that’s got great lighting. It may be natural light or artificial. Just make sure there are no shadows or dark places that will obscure the little one’s face. Pick some holiday props. Even if your living room looks like a hurricane came through it, clear an area of all but a chair or bench and some lovely holiday props like a wreath, holiday gifts or holiday stuffed toys or blanket. Depending on the number of children to be photographed and their age, you’ll want to have everything set up before you call them over. Take a few test shots to see if the area you’ve prepared looks good in the frame. Use your digital camera’s playback feature to see the shots after you’ve taken them.

Now, bring over the kids. You can also take a family photo if your camera has a self timer. Just set the camera on a piece of furniture or a tripod and click and run so you can get in the photo.

Set everyone up so that all faces can be seen and there are no distractions in the frame. Even the smallest thing can ruin a great photo. Make sure all collars are in the right place, all ruffles and fringe are flat and in place. All faces clean? Then you’re ready to roll.

Shoot a photo and look at it right away. Do the colors work? Is everyone smiling? Is the photo centered? Modern photo programs like Picasa (which you can download for free) will allow you to crop and edit, so you don’t have to go crazy trying to get it absolutely perfect. But no program will fix a photo that’s fuzzy or blurred.

Take another few frames and review. Are the expressions realistic? A phony looking card is worse than none at all. If you’ve got a whole family in the frame, be sure to check each person to make sure their eyes weren’t closed. Red eye can be taken out in a photo program so don’t worry so much about that.

If you’ve got small children or pets that are supposed to be in the picture, let them rest between takes. Chances are you’ll get a better photo if you are spontaneous. So have one person place Fido or Baby in their place as you quickly get several shots in a row. You may find that an un-posed, off the cuff shot is better than anything you could have set up.

Have fun with holiday photo taking this year. Use the same suggestions when taking candids around the holiday table or at parties. Check to see what’s in the background before you shoot. Make sure the lighting is right. Turn off the flash if there’s an overload of light in the photo. Center your subject. Zoom in at concerts as close as you can to your child so you can get a good shot of their face. The audience shots of the entire group are often not as personal as a close up of the individuals.

With these simple guidelines, your holiday photos will turn out professional every time.

When the holidays arrive, thoughts turn to parties. If you want to host a fabulous one this year, start with lovely invitations. There are so many ways to create memorable and interesting invitations. You can make them yourself or design them online and have a printing company print them for you.

If you choose to make your invitations yourself, gather up the necessary supplies. You’ll need rubber stamps, ink, glitter, good card stock, envelopes, and markers or pens. Choose a rubber stamp with a holiday theme. Do a stocking and then cut out the shape so your whole invitation is the shape of a stocking. Or stamp out a Christmas tree and then decorate it with glitter and tiny ornaments made of foil or fancy papers. The fun of the handmade invitation is that you can design any shape and size you like. You might do a snowman cutout and then layer in glue and dust with white glitter. Add facial details with markers. Visit a craft store or look through holiday magazines for ideas on how to personalize invitations to suit your theme.

If you want an even easier way to design fun holiday invitations, try a site like vistaprint.com. There, you can design your own cards either using their templates or you can upload your own design. Add photos of your kids, your pets, or even upload your holiday card from last year to use as an invitation this year. The process is so easy. Log on and start designing. Once you have chosen your holiday design—and there are dozens to choose from—just add your wording. You can write a little rhyming verse to invite everyone over, or just list the date and time in fancy script. You might ask everyone to bring something like canned food to donate to a food bank or an ornament for an ornament swap.

The invitation is the perfect place to include something special that’s more than just paper and ink. Why not put a piece of mistletoe in an envelope with a little card tied to it with your invite information? Or deliver an evergreen branch to your friends in person with the details tied onto it. There is no limit to the ways you can use ordinary objects from the holiday season to send out your invitation.

Another fun idea is to purchase inexpensive clear glass ornaments from a craft store. Fill them with something festive like red and green candies or potpourri and then write your party details with permanent marker on each one. Tie up with a pretty silk ribbon and deliver by hand. The thrill of seeing your invitations come in person will give everyone a taste of how special your party is going to be.

If you’re going to be caroling at the party, why not print your invitation on the back of a musical score? Photo copy the words and music to a song you’ll be singing and include your invite on the back in pretty colored paper. Tie it all up in a ribbon and mail in a tube.

For a fun and yummy treat, how about cookie invitations? You can decorate cookies with your invitation details. Once the cookies have had time to set, put one per small box and tie up with a ribbon. Label and you can send these through the mail. Or, of course you can hand deliver your holiday treat.

Create a theme for your party early on so you can carry it through in your invitation. This will be the first thing people will see and it will set the tone for your party. If you’re having a snowman themed fete, send a small snowman ornament in a box along with your details. Or if you’re having theme is red cardinals, send a red cardinal pin or suncatcher as your invitation. With indelible pens, you can write on just about any surface and make the most amazing invitations.

It’s very rewarding and fun to make your own Christmas ornaments. Whether you want to make them with your children or make them to give to special people in your life, you can craft a bunch of wonderful ornaments that make great Christmas gifts and will appear on the tree for years to come.

Photos

You can use digital photos of family and pets to make really cute ornaments. Experiment with online software such as Picassa, which is free, to retouch your photos. After you’ve got your photos just right, print them out. Or you can use traditional photos printed from film in the same way. For an easy craft that children can do, craft ornaments from felt shapes. Cut out trees, bells, birds, holly or any other Christmas shape from felt in colors like green, red and gold. Using regular school glue, glue a photo on each shape. Punch a hole through the top and string yarn through the hole. You can also laminate photos and hang them on string or add glitter to the edges of photos and glue them on dominoes and hang them from the tree. There is no end to the ways you can turn photos into lovely ornaments. Use your imagination and get started creating memories.

Clear Glass or Plastic Balls

Every craft store carries some form of glass or plastic clear ornaments. These are perfect for filling with special items. The hooks are included, so all you have to do is fill and hang. One idea is to fill with glitter, confetti in fun Christmas shapes, photos of the kids or pets, potpourri, or sequins. The fun of these ornaments is that you can fill them with just about anything. If you live on the coast and have family that lives in the Midwest, filling an ornament with sand and shells is a fun surprise. Have children draw or write on the outside with permanent marker and don’t forget to add the year.

Cookie Ornaments

You can bake sugar cookies like you normally would, decorate them with colorful icing and then hang them from the tree. Be sure to poke a hole in each cookie before it’s baked as you can’t add the hole later without the cookie crumbling. Another way to make ornaments that will last (unlike cookies which will last only the one season) is to make a home made play dough. The dough can be made easily using a few ingredients you probably already have in the pantry. You use the same method you would for cookies, only there is no baking. The dough will air dry. Use shellac from a craft store to protect the ornaments and make them shiny.

Homemade Dough for Ornaments

Ingredients:

1 cup cold water

1 cup salt

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Tempera paint or food coloring

3 cups flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients together with a wooden spoon until a soft dough forms. Roll out and cut with cookie cutters. Poke a hole with a pencil through the top of the ornaments. Allow to dry and run a string through the hole and place on the tree.

The more food coloring or paint you add to the dough, the darker your colors will be. Section off small batches of dough before you add the color so you’ll have more than one color to work with.

Use embellishments such as glitter, sequins, yarn, and fabric to decorate your dough ornaments. Add google eyes. You can even paint on top of the dough and make them as bright as you like.

What do you do with the mountain of Christmas cards you receive every year? They’re too lovely to throw out, and it just seems so wasteful not to reuse them somehow. Before you toss them in the trash, take a look at these ideas for reusing your cards.

1. Make Gift Tags: Because Christmas cards are usually printed on lovely card stock with pretty designs, they make ideal gift tags. You can cut out a portion and use it as a gift tag on a holiday present you are giving. Make a whole pile of gift tags at once by cutting just the best parts of images on each card you have. Then, when you need a tag, just pull one out and write the recipient’s name on it.
2. Make Christmas Ornaments: Use the images from your favorite cards to make festive ornaments. Cut out the images you like and glue them onto felt or card stock and hang from the tree. Try various backings from cork to wood. If you like the Holiday Card Star pictured here, you can make one of your own!  Instructions can be found at JennyHarada.com.
3. Use them in Crafting or Altered Art: One hot trend in crafting these days is altered art. This is simply decorating a page in a journal or an object with different images that you’ve cut out from various sources. Add Christmas card images to your collages.
4. Make Magnets: Cut out images and glue magnets to the back. Hang on the fridge. You can find craft magnets at the crafting store.
5. Make a Decorative Plate: Using any clear glass plate and some images from cards you can make a charming display item. Simply glue images to the back of the plate with the design facing out. Use mod podge or other medium that will dry clear. These plates are perfect for hanging as decorations, but should not be used for food. They are not washable once you’ve glued the backs with images.
6. Make another card: Who says you can’t reuse the whole front of a card? Just cut off the portion that has writing on it and glue it to another piece of pretty paper. Add ribbon and other embellishments so your card looks finished and well thought out.
7. Let the kids rip them: What fun it is for kids if you tell them it’s ok to rip up certain cards! Let them reuse the pieces to make puzzles or to decorate a paper wreath. There are hundreds of uses for little paper scraps. Let a child’s imagination run wild and you will be surprised at just how creative they can be. Provide other supplies like glue sticks and construction paper, glitter, sequins and paint so they can really show off.
8. Make bookmarks: Take favorite images and glue them to heavy card stock. Punch a hole and then add a tassel or ribbon to the top and place in your favorite book. These make great extras to tuck into gifts or cards.
9. Recipe Cards: If you want to share your favorite Christmas recipes with family and friends, write your recipe on the back of a recycled Christmas card image.
10. Placemats: Cut out images and lay them down on clear contact paper. Or glue images down on paper and laminate the whole sheet. Office supply stores will do laminating for you by the piece.

Keep your kids occupied this holiday season with these fun Christmas-tree themed craft ideas.  They'll love making their own creations to proudly display in your home or to share with friends and family. 

Here are links to just a few of my favorite Christmas tree crafts:
Paper Christmas Tree - to create an adorable table top decoration
Pine Cone Christmas Tree - kids can spend hours finding pine cones in the yard to create these adorable ornaments (or you can buy pine cones at a craft store)
Little Christmas Tree Decoration - watch this video to learn how to make these cute little trees

Create this beautiful jewel-covered Christmas tree craft by drawing a Christmas tree on a piece of heavy white (or green) card stock.  Cut out the trees. Then glue green jewels around the edge of the tree to create a green tree outline.  If you can find brown jewels, you can use those to outline the trunk.  Use red jewels to create a zig-zag garland pattern and tree topper. Then, glue on any color of jewels that you like to make "ornaments" on the tree.  These beautiful jeweled creations can be glued on Christmas gift basketsto give them some pizazz or we often use them as gift hang tags by punching a small hole in them and tying on a small ribbon to attach them to the wrapped gift bag or Christmas gift box.