A Homemade Christmas

I have been truly inspired this year by bloggers from all over to include more handmade items with the gifts I plan to give for Christmas. I have included some of my more ambitious items in this post along with a link to the post where I originally found my inspiration. I encourage you to check out these other blogs. They will have the tutorial that I used and you can see the original projects they created. It is well worth the time.

The first gift I made was a fairy tree house for Big Sis. Yes, I know she is 12 years old, but she still loves to play. When I saw this Pixie Hollow inspired fairy house from Pink and Green Mama I knew she would love it. I used wooden pieces from Hobby Lobby to construct the house, then hot glued filler from the floral department to give it that woodsy look. I constructed the furniture from pieces I gathered from a potpourri set. They had all kinds of cool organic shapes and they were perfect for making the little beds and swings and chairs.

For the stairs I hot glued these flat pieces of wood together with little cubes in between. Then I got glued the mossy filler in between. This is currently hiding out in my garage which is why the photos look like they are taken in a junk pile.

The second project has been in the back of my mind for almost a year now, ever since reading this post by Rhythm of the Home. She made a painted wooden travel play set and I just fell in love with it. Last summer Birdy fell in love with the movie Tangled and so I decided to recreate the idea using the movie as inspiration. I first created the peg dolls to vaguely resemble each of the characters. Then I started to work in the play box. I painted the out side of the box to look like bricks from the tower.

On the inside of the box I painted scenes from the movie. I painted the tower and Rapunzel's valley on the lid of the box. In the bottom of the box I painted a water fall and a forest scene.

When you turn the box around and look a the wall (as if looking out from Rapunzel's tower) you see the castle with lanterns flying out over a lake. I am hoping this small world scene will be just the thing to inspire her imagination for play.

I am really enjoying this hands on approach to Christmas giving. I hope the kids like them as well. Have you ever tried making home made gifts for your kids? What kinds of gifts do you make? I would love seeing any projects you are working on for this holiday season. Leave me a link bellow so I can check it out.
Thanks for stopping by!