a few gifts

I know that I told you that May and June were so busy with birthdays in both mine and my husbands families. Throw in friends that were born in May and Mother's Day and I just have lots of fun coming up with homemade gifts. I really hope that the homemade gift has come a long way and it is something desired instead of dreaded like it might have been in my day. I am just saying that I had a few grandmas and great grandmas that painted us oil paintings, crocheted snowflakes, made us dolls, etc. and I just didn't appreciate it at the young ages of 5-10. I sure wish that I had some of those homemade gifts now or that I even had the talent to crochet a snowflake. I appreciate it all so much more now. So,as I try to make things for my children's little friends, I make sure that their gifts are part homemade and part favorite character because one part will last a long time and the other will keep them excited as they open their gifts.

For our friend, Walker, I made another beefed up kidlet like the one here and put coloring books, notepads, colored pencils, and crayons with the characters from Cars of them.

Here is a sign that my mother in law asked me to make for her daughter Kerri's birthday. She had seen it in a store and thought, "I'll get Traci to make this." I usually just print the lettering on overhead projector screen and cut it out with an exacto knife to make a stencil. And, you should see my garage when it comes to finding pieces of wood that I can use. My husband is a home builder and our garage is his storage unit! I let my son help me stencil and it got a bit blobby in parts, so I really had to distress the lettering to make it look a bit better!

Then, this is the eye glasses case I made my mom for Mother's Day. I am thinking that I need to add a snap or some velcro at the top to hold the glasses in. I will play with the case I made for my self (the one for the tutorial) and see which works best.