homemade holidays

I love homemade gifts for the holidays; it's so fun to think of something special for family and friends and then get to work making it.  This year I had a ball making these Christmas gifts.

I made Picture Coasters for my parents.  A few years ago I made coasters with scrapbook paper and they've held up perfectly so when I saw these on pinterest I was dying to try them out.  They turned out so well that I made a set for myself also!  

To commemorate our trip to Harry Potter World I made golden snitch ornaments.  I got the idea here, but her method was way more complicated than mine.  I was going to just use glittery gold cardstock but in the paper section at Michael's I found this awesome stuff that was kind of like faux leather but it was glittery gold.  I know that makes absolutely no sense, just go to Michael's and look for it.  That paper made it easy peasy- I cut out lots of wings, glued them together so they were double-sided, then hot glued them on to the gold ornament (from the Dollar Store.)

I made a couple of Plaid Scarves for friends using Janssen's tutorial.  These actually took way longer than I expected, but mostly just because the sewing gods were not on my side that night.

My favorite of all- the Mermaid Blanket.  I saw this on Pinterest and knew my girls needed mermaid blankets.  I couldn't find a tutorial so I just figured it out on my own and they actually weren't very difficult at all.  After finishing I found this tutorial which is almost exactly how I did it (except I added some detail on the fins before attaching them to the tail and I didn't do waist fins- but those are so cute!)  I made one for Jilly and one for Mattie, and they make the cutest little mermaid I've ever seen.