Handmade Gifts 2012, Part 1

We draw names on my side of the family for Christmas. That means each member of my own family will get a gift for another member of the extended family. So, basically I had four gifts to take care of for our swap. I have never attempted a completely handmade Christmas. Way too overwhelming. I bow low to those of you who manage it! But I did try to include handmade elements with each name draw gift.

Even though I was struggling to get along with the new Cameo, I did manage to produce the papercut card sets you see above for my niece. She’s the busy mommy of two toddlers, so I figured having nice cards handy would save a trip to the store. I designed both these cards a while back, here and here. Instead of cutting them by hand for multiples, I converted the files to DXF for the plotter. Yada yada. And they were done.

After they were assembled, I tied a couple of stacks together with envelopes and pretty ribbon. During the yada yada there were moments when I thought I could have cut each by hand and had them done faster. It was a learning experience but
1) I was very pleased with the cards I did manage to make and
2) now I have Much Knowledge.
To be fair, most folks probably don’t get their Cameo out of the box and start importing their own custom cut files. I kinda skipped the whole crawl before you walk part.

I raided my awesome paper tower to produce a variety in eye-popping colors. Have I mentioned how much I love and adore my cheap, plastic paper tower? I have? Oh.

Sorry for the gloomy photos. It looked like a nuclear winter here for the last half of December. My new replacement blades have arrived promptly from Silhouette America, so I’m looking forward to giving this another try and seeing if the fine cuts/points/corners come out cleaner.