My Crafts for 2008 Holidays

I had a lot of fun with my holiday crafts this past year :0). For my main gift I ended up doing these cool 3D snowflakes. I had so many different ideas that I was throwing around but in the end I came back to these beauties. They're actually relatively easy to make but have such a pretty end result.

I first saw these last year at the papercutting conference that I went to. Then a friend of mine was making them for her craft, then Lauren (the girl I worked with) designed a snowflake program for work and had these as the craft. It was actually thanks to her because she taught me how to make them and inspired me to do more.



And if you would like to try and make one yourself, you can check out this website:
How to make a 3D Paper Snowflake

There are actually lots of websites and YouTube videos on how to make them - just search 3D snowflake. The only difference with the ones that I made were that I used hot glue instead of tape or staples. I found it worked better and looked nicer. Oh, and I sprayed them with glitter.

Then I also got into making ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). I've been hearing a lot about these and thought that they could be a fun and easy craft to do. I actually belong to a papercutting ATC group, although I had never attempted one before the ones I did for the holidays.

ATCs are miniature works of art created on 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 inch card stock. They are originals, small editions and most importantly, self-produced. Anybody can produce them. The idea is that you trade them with other people who produce cards, either at trading sessions, through the mail or wherever you meet another ATC trader.

The project was initiated in 1997 by Zurich artist M.Vanci Stirnemann, who created 1200 cards by hand as part of an exhibit. At the closing reception he invited others to create their own cards and trade with him. Since then several hundred people from all over the world have traded ATCs.


Artist Trading Cards are typically made on a base of card stock, however any base is acceptable. The art on the cards can be done in any media; pencil, pen, acrylic, oil, collage, textile arts, scratch board, digital art, calligraphy, beadwork, rubber stamps, pen and ink, colored pencil, airbrush, pastels, and many others - basically anything you would like to use.

Anyway, I tried to personalize them with things that represented the people that I was making them for. This picture is a collage of the ones that I did, but below is a slideshow that you can see them in more detail if you click on it.

I had a lot of fun with them and actually have more that aren't on here yet because I still need to send them out. But here is a call to all of you. If you received an ATC from me, I challenge you to make one for me. And it can be any style at all - it does not need to be a papercutting. The only rule is that it needs to be the 2 1/2 X 3 1/2 inch size. AND, if you have yet to receive one from me, feel free to send me one and I will send you one back! (and that really goes for ANYONE! - just send me a message through this blog!)

I also got to do a couple of special papercuttings. This one was for my cousin Tori. It (of course) way very late. It was actually for her graduation. She likes Snoopy a lot so I thought it would be fitting :)


I was also comissioned to do this one for our friend June. It was a gift for her husband as a graduation present. He got his Ph. D. from Penn State and did a lot of work with acoustics. I thought that it turned out really neat.

And this one was a first for me. A girl that worked with me over the summer comissioned me to make one for her mother. She collects pictures of Rainbow Falls at Watkins Glen State Park. So I took a picture of Rainbow Falls and turned it into this cutting. I was pretty freaked out while making it but really liked the way it turned out.

Here is the real picture that I used for the cutting below.

And one more fun craft - a Wordle! I was at a conference for invasive species and saw my first Wordle. Basically, you go to this website and type in a bunch of words. Then it shuffles them and makes them into pretty word clouds like this:

Here is the website for endless fun: www.wordle.net

(But beware - sometimes not all words show up. This wordle that I did was for a gift tag for my mom's family celebration. I typed in all the names but for some reason Jim and Dan would not show up. Of course I didn't realize until I had already passed them out and felt really bad, but I eventually got it fixed. The only way I could make it work was to put the names with another name. So just beware that there are still some quirks with it.)