Monday Musings on the Creator in Me

In this season of gift giving, when we contemplate God's perfect gift of His Son, and strive to give a glimpse of the enormity of His Love by finding the "perfect gifts" for our dear ones, I've noticed a movement toward hand/home made gifts -- and I'm really drawn to that idea. I'm also drawn to creative ideas about how to show our children that we love them. Sally Clarkson often talks about back rubs accompanied by a batch of homemade cookies to stoke the fire of a warm relationship, and she has written on her blog about the power of life-giving words. I recently heard of another author that advocates writing personal letters to our children so that they have a tangible reminder of our words that can be referred to over and over again -- not a new concept by any means, but such a good idea that is easily forgotten in this technological age.

After perusing a couple of art books about making your own journals, I decided -- at the 11th hour -- that I was going to create a journal for my daughter (DD13) and fill it with a letter from me -- in time for Christmas :) (Ultimately, I'd like to make one for each of my children -- but I started too late to get them done as Christmas gifts.)

Based on the ideas that had sparked my interest in the library books about making journals, I started to gather materials from our stash. My eyes fell on some pink and black fabric, and I remembered my daughter creating an outfit using those colours -- so that became the base of my colour theme. There was a tin we've had for years, waiting for some new use, and some "old" art (decorated dominoes, impromptu watercolour paintings by DD8, one of my altered book pages), some screen, some foil tape, stickers, beads . . . and here are a few pages of the final result: (I've added the pink hearts and Christmas decorations in picnik to conceal most of my text.)



(The photo was printed -- rather unsuccessfully -- on a transparency.)

 The crinolin from the pink and black dress I used for my colour scheme became a layer to hide the cover page:

I accidentally cut through the edge of the hem of the fabric when I trimmed the page -- so I hid some text underneath and made it look like "I meant to do that;":

I've read in a few places about altering photos by sanding the background and painting/pasteling/markering over top -- so I played a bit with that on some very old photos of DD13, then glued/sewed them together back-to-back to make a page:

 I thought it would be fun to make a see-through page using the screen and foil tape:

 The background of the left page below was made (with permission) using one of DD8's paintings:

A few beads and bling, eyelets and wire for binding -- and voila! A keepsake that I hope will be a well-read reminder of my love for DD13. It wouldn't be a thing of beauty to every beholder, but it holds special meaning for DD13 and me.

Are there any creative ways you've found to express your love to someone special? Are there any homemade gifts that you've given -- or received -- that communicate your feelings in a creative way? I'd love to hear about them in a comment. Leave a link, too, if you have one!

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