Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

We love creating new things out of items that would typically get thrown in the recycling bin. In this case we made some sparkly, colorful gift tags from a empty tea box.

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

First we cut out the sides of the box:

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

This tea box was a Yogi Tea that decorates the inside of their boxes with detailed patterns. (Have a plain tea box? You could always draw your own designs! Don’t have a tea box? Use a piece of cardboard or card-stock instead!)

We colored one side of the squares with watercolor pencils and glitter glue:

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags
Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags
Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

Then we glued the cardboard to sparkly origami paper so that the back side would be pretty too:

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags
Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

After the glue dried, we cut out around the tags:

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

We then wrote recipient names (people from our immediate family) and placed each tag on a present under the tree:

Decorated Recycled Tea Box Gift Tags

We may end up mod podging the tags to preserve them so we can use them next year too. I love the idea of a recycled project that we will be able to reuse for years to come!

Hanukkah and Christmas Projects from Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts Book

I’ve written before about my love of Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts: 225 Inspired Projects for Year-Round Celebrations, featuring the best holiday craft projects from past issues of Martha Stewart Living Magazine.

Preview inside the new Martha Stewart's Handmade Holiday Crafts book

Now it’s time for a roundup of my favorite Hanukkah and Christmas crafts from the book, with links to the instructions for each of the crafts on the Martha Stewart Living website.

Here are the Hanukkah and Christmas projects that I’m most excited to try from the book:

Hanukkah and Christmas Projects from Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts Book
Glittered Dreidels – transform plain wooden dreidels into glittery Hanukkah decorations. Use them to adorn presents, garlands, or create dramatic centerpieces by filling a glass jar or hurricane with a variety in a number of different sizes. (link)

Hanukkah and Christmas Projects from Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts Book
Kids’ Glittered Menorah – a fun menorah making project involving a piece of wood, metal nuts, glitter and glue. (We’re in the process of making a similar one using wooden spools instead of the metal nuts.) (link)

Hanukkah and Christmas Projects from Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts Book
Paper Evergreens made from graduated paper circles, gently folded, and adhered to wooden skewers with hot glue. (link)

Hanukkah and Christmas Projects from Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts Book
Embellished Tags use natural materials to dress up ordinary paper solid-colored tags — LOVE LOVE LOVE! (link)

Enjoy these crafts ideas? Peruse the craft section of Martha Stewart website for more ideas or pick up your own copy of Martha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts today!

Paper Fun with the Toymaker

This past weekend we attended a fantastic paper craft workshop with artist, illustrator and author Marilyn Scott-Waters of the award winning Toymaker website.

Remember these adorable paper dolls? They came from her site!

Paper Fun with the Toy Maker Marilyn Scott-Waters

I’m excited to have discovered that the instructions for many of the fun projects we did in our class are also featured on her website, so you can do them too!

We made and decorated: fairy books, koi kites, mini books, and paper butterflies.

Paper Fun with the Toy Maker Marilyn Scott-Waters

We even learned how to transform a single sheet of paper into a circle big enough to jump through! (More on that another time.)

Marilyn’s Toymaker website contains a wealth of other fun paper crafts. Check out her Hanukkah Crafts for a gelt box, menorah lighting activity, coloring pages, gift boxes, and more. There is also a fun filled Christmas Crafts page including beautifully illustrated gift cards, paper balls, boxes, and stars to print out and enjoy.

Paper Fun with the Toy Maker Marilyn Scott-Waters

You can also find Marilyn’s affordable books at your local bookstore. She is the author of The Toymaker’s Workshop: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself and The Toymaker’s Christmas: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself, two beautifully illustrated books containing hours of paper-crafting entertainment. We’ve had such fun assembling toys from The Toymaker’s Christmas, which she kindly autographed for us!

Be sure to subscribe to her fantastic, FREE newsletter for monthly updates on new paper toy projects. We also highly recommend picking up her books, which feature punch out paper toys (no scissors involved!). We are hooked!

Paper Fun with the Toy Maker Marilyn Scott-Waters

Dollhouse Challenge + Bedroom Preview

We’re restoring a family heirloom, the dollhouse made for my husband’s grandmother when she was a little girl. Click here to see all the posts about our Dollhouse Redux Project.

Last month I had every intention of finishing our dollhouse in time for today’s I’m a Giant Challenge deadline… and then I realized that the majority of the dollhouse furniture will be under the Christmas tree this year and far be it for me to open up our daughter’s gifts ahead of her.

Dollhouse Bedroom

So I don’t have a completed dollhouse to show you.

Dollhouse Bedroom

In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever have a completed dollhouse to show you because, well, we don’t have that kind of dollhouse. A family heirloom we inherited when David’s grandmother passed away last winter, this dollhouse belongs to our daughter.

Dollhouse Bedroom

Any time I start to make decisions regarding colors or fabric or decorations, I remind myself to step back, because quite frankly this dollhouse isn’t at all about me. It’s completely about her. She gets to make those choices. She gets to shape, play with and love this special dollhouse that belongs to her.

Dollhouse Bedroom

So while I’ve enjoyed painting and sewing away, I’ve been helping our daughter in realizing her dollhouse vision. And it’s beautiful.

Dollhouse Bedroom

I can’t wait to share more with you soon.

Handmade Ornament Roundup

We believe in crafting a handmade holiday, making our own ornaments for our tree, baking and making as many gifts as we can. The holidays feel so much more special when there’s heart involved.

Our handmade ornaments

I’ve been thrilled to see that our daughter remembers last fall’s activities and now sees them as tradition. Come November she eagerly reminded me that we needed to start sewing ornaments for this years tree.

Our handmade ornaments

And so our home transforms into a Craft House with every surface covered with holiday projects, glitter, glue, feathers, felt, string, and stickers:

Messy art spaces
Messy art spaces

Here are some of the ornaments we’ve made, some from last year, many created in the last few weeks.

Our handmade ornaments
Our handmade ornaments
Our handmade ornaments
Our handmade ornaments
Our handmade ornaments
Our handmade ornaments
Our handmade ornaments

I love this time of the year.

Shown above:
+ Felt Christmas Tree Ornaments
+ Bird Ornaments (from Skip to my Lou)
+ Beaded wreath ornaments
+ Felted stars, wooden stars, and felt hearts
+ Popcorn garlands
+ Popsicle stick six pointed stars
+ Grape vine wreaths with tinsel and bells

Still to be made:
+ Dehydrated orange slices (try dehydrating ruby red grapefruit for a beautiful pink color!)