My partially-handmade Christmas

Okay, so it’s February. Christmas was two months ago. But who doesn’t like a little midwinter inspiration? A big Scrooge, that’s who.

Most years, I do my holiday gift-giving using a mixture of online shopping, panicked eleventh-hour trips to Target, and making by hand things that I (a) have time for, and (b) think I can make by hand without them looking like a second-grader’s art-class project.

My dad has been getting back into gardening, so I made him a set of garden stakes: you know, those things you stick in the dirt at the end of a row of seeds so you know what’s growing (or not growing, as the case may be) there. Behold:

These started life as a set of Formica samples the countertop guy gave us when we replaced our kitchen counters. Apparently he did not want them back, and now I only have approximately 9,886 more laminate rectangles to figure out what to do with.

The thing is, paint doesn’t stick to laminate so well, so even though I primed the samples before painting them, it scratches off very easily (particularly when using dark-colored paint).

The problem wasn’t as noticeable with this light green. I primed and painted the samples on both sides, using two coats of latex I had left over from paint samples. I then drew pretty words and pictures on them with metallic Sharpie pens.

Other materials:

• Wooden dowels, cut into 12-inch lengths, sanded and painted
• Hooks and eyes, screwed into one end of each dowel (the package I bought just included the “eye” parts, but it was still labeled “hooks and eyes”)
• Jewelry-making wire to attach the tags to the dowels

Since I already had most of the materials, I think this little project came in under $5, and a few hours of work.

Garden stakes all wrapped and ready to go.

My other handmade gift was “commissioned” by my sister’s boyfriend T. He’d seen and liked some of my paintings when he was down for the wedding, so he asked if I’d do him something with red and beige to go with his living room. Sure! I said, little knowing that I wouldn’t have time for over a year. But! Better late than never.

I decided on the Mackinac Bridge as a subject, since T lives in Michigan and I grew up doing the Labor Day bridge walk every year, so it’s dear to my heart. The Mackinac Bridge has neither red nor beige in it, you say? Pish, I reply. Artistic license, baby. Since it had to travel in a suitcase and big canvases are expensive, even in thrift stores, I painted a diptych (that’s a fancy painterly word that means two paintings that go together).

The Mackinac Bridge, on the day the skies turn to bloooood.

Now, I am not a trained artist (“No shit,” says anyone who knows anything about painting. Or possibly anyone who has ever seen a painting). But T. loved his gift. LOVED. IT. Or he did a very good job of pretending he did. So I’ll count it as a success.

This one came in at around $25, for the canvases (sad little paintings abandoned at the Salvation Army), replenishing my paint supply, and buying a couple of itty bitty brushes. Which I will use again, when I do another painting in three years.