Upside – I have attempted things that I haven’t done before and am starting to believe and grow in my creativity

Downside – Less time to sit down and write about what I have done and share it

When I started with the BLOG, I had NO idea that it was so time consuming. Between being a wife, mom of 3 active boys, family, church, work, new Creative Projects* AND (to my dismay) a personality does not allow for many half- baked things, trying to nail down some time to write my blog has become a little more difficult.

*I have so many things I have done in the last couple of months, but not sure what is blog worthy or not yet

I am trying to figure out what will be the best route forward for me sharing my creativity, so come pop in and see if there is something new….and if there isn’t you know my hands are getting dirty doing something new that I will hopefully share at some stage  

So before Christmas hits us right between the eyes, I wanted to share some wrapping ideas again.

THE FAKE PRESENT!

You may ask yourself what “the fake present” is and why on earth I would want to do a “fake present”. There are 2 and a half reasons for this:

1.  For those in our house that feel the need to sniff around and figure out what Father and Mother Christmas has got them
2.  Living in South Africa ( and I suppose that could be said for anywhere in the world if you have watched Home Alone), it might be the safest thing to put a “Fake Present” under the tree in case someone else wants to help themselves to your presents
½. They look pretty under the Christmas tree

So, this is a relatively easy project you will need some of the following:

• Boxes
• Brown paper
• Sellotape
• Scissors
• Ribbons or string
• Wax for seals
• Stickers – I designed, printed and cut my own, but buying some from a shop or even drawing them could work very well!

The boys were intrigued at the presents that appeared underneath the tree so early in December already. Who was it for, what was in it? Can we touch it? HAHA…..refer to point 1

I thought I would leave you with NOT SO FAKE present ideas for friends, teachers or someone you love………….

My wish for you all the Christmas is that

I hope you don’t just have presents this Christmas, but that you are Present.

Care for the people love you and love the people that don’t care!  

Make Christmas count!

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It is official: 16 weeks to Christmas! WHAT??

I just LOVE Christmas! It definately isn’t the most significant biblical date we celebrate but it IS the time we celebrate our Saviours birth. And I love this time of celebration and giving! The way our family celebrates is “less of us and more of you” attitude.  The kids all get one present from us (and maybe a few small things from the family) and the adults do a “Santa’s hat” type of gift giving which results in one nice present. Hahaha….except for the year that I got  a “car battery charger”.  Much too long to explain how this happened now…..maybe one day.

For the rest, Christmas is a time of giving, spoiling and blessing others around us. I do take tremendous delight in doing up my house and making everything look very Chrismasy (not a word, I know, yet such a perfect description).

So, in order to prepare properly I am starting now! September has crept up on me and I am not letting Christmas catch me unaware!

I have started off by designing some Christmas packaging stickers a few weeks ago, but as they are still to be printed and I cannot show you, I have been thinking of Christmas wrapping. Or for that matter, wrapping in general.

I can hear you saying “Just throw it into a gift bag” or “use wrapping from the shops”. I don’t deny that when presented with the last minute gift wrap challenge, these would be a good option, but if I have time I like to do something different.

I love all things paper!! So, in my pursuit of creativeness I have chosen a blank canvas to start my process. I have NOT searched the web as to options on what to do as I wanted this to be something that comes from me regardless if it is great or not!

As my first instalment of wrapping I also decided to stay very “clean” with only accents of colour. I have included some samples below of what I have done.

Please note that I have done loads of drawings….some stayed and some have landed up in the waste basket. The trick is to keep on drawing and playing around.

Below I started off with using a brainwave as my pattern for my first design. I use only the red berries as my accent on the wrapping.

Then I progressed to drawing simple building line drawings and adding some of the washi tape from my stash*. The photos just don’t do it justice!

And finally (my favourite) I started cutting up my old telephone book and making shapes that I stuck down. Using a Sharpie I drew over the patterns. I have big plans for my old phone books….might even need to go collect some more for future projects!! Below is one of the ones I have made.

*Stash – The copious amounts of art supplies you buy that you have NO clue what you going to use it for BUT you still buy it and store it, because you know that there is somewhere you will be able to use it (or you think there is)

Go make “Pretty”! It is sooo easy to get make your own unique wrapping! Add some colour or even some extra 3D elements!

Get wrapping!!

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