Crafty Musings by Hagit

Guest gifts/favors

 

A few days ago, I invited some good friends over , and I wanted to give them something small, just for being good friends, for showing up and celebrating with me.

 I bought the sweetest little pocket books at a dollar store, and stamped them with this friendship stamp, and then started drawing little portraits.

I've just started drawing very recently, so I'm not very comfortable or confident in my drawing, but this was fun! I just let myself enjoy this as an exercise:

 

 And I was so happy with how they turned out, that I colored them in, and stuck them on my stamped pocketbooks:

 

 I then sewed small drawstring bags to slip them into, and I was done!

 

 Here they are, all together:

 

 I loved working on these small gifts, and since I'm always looking for simple ideas for quick gifts, I collected some on a Pinterest board, for everyone to use. Here it is, my quick gifts board.

What about you? do you have any good ideas for small, simple and quick handmade gifts?

 

 

The Guest Book

My friend, Gali, celebrated her birthday several months ago, and I made a guest book where we all wished her our birthday greetings. I wrote about this in my Hebrew blog a long time ago, but this post reminded me that I had made something similar, and I wanted to share it here too.

I had returned from Japan a few weeks before the birthday party, where I bought a Fuji Instax camera, and I really wanted to use it in a way that would not only be for taking pictures, but taking instant pictures where you actually do need them on the spot. So I came up with the guest book.

I used an old book cover, inserted a binder mechanism, and put in some scrapbooking paper. I embellished the pages lightly with some stickers and ribbon, and created lines to write on with washi tape (another something I brought from Japan! :)):

 

See the library card on the right? I love it! It's a very old book, and that card even has columns for you to write whether or not you enjoyed the book!

This another one of the pages I prepared:

And these are the final pages, with our instant pictures and birthday greetings (view larger here):

 

And the book, closed:

I really liked the outcome, I think it was a great surprise for the birthday girl, and a great keepsake from her party, with pictures and birthday wishes.

If you have other original ideas for guest/birthday wish books or original ways of using my instax, I'd love to know! share them here, I'm going to need some more!:-)

(All pictures in this post were taken by Gali)

Altered Photos - A Workshop

Yesterday was the first time I gave this workshop, and I enjoyed it a lot. We got together in a nice shady garden, and had a blast with water, paint, gel pens and more.

I think these types of workshops are my favorite, since they're all fun and freedom without an attachment to the outcome. I think sometimes it's even better when something "goes wrong". Because then you can really feel free. Thinking that you've ruined it, you let yourself go even more, scratching, painting, stamping carelessly. And then my favorite part is watching how someone who was convinced that she'd "ruined" her picture, starts liking it!

These were the samples I made for the workshop:

 

 

And these are some of the beautiful photos altered by the women in the workshop: