a peek inside the fishbowl

We all spend too much at Christmas, don’t we?

I think we can all agree that the best gifts are sometimes the ones that we make ourselves. I thought I’d share with you a few of my favourite crafty ideas just in time for the holidays.

Paper Boxes

Working with paper gives me a particular thrill. Especially when it comes to making paper containers. After much searching I found a good link for making paper boxes. These are totally easy. Click here for the step-by-step instructions, with photos!

All you need are some scissors, a pencil and a ruler. Get a good long ruler, not one of those dinky ones you had in your pencil case in grade six. You will thank me for this. You might want to use a bone folder or the edge of a spoon for cleaner folds.

I had an old calendar kicking around that I was loathe to throw away. It was a gift from my mother-in-law, it had some really pretty black and white photos of cats. Finally, a use for it! The calendar pages were the perfect weight for this kind of project. Later on I also made a tiny gift box out of an old greeting card, and have made them out of scrapbook paper as well.

Reminder: measure and cut as accurately as you can. And use a little bit of glue at the end. It’ll be a little studier this way.

Here’s one of the boxes I made. Hooray for me!

I like to make them with a piece of metal stuck inside the lid (e.g. the lid you sliced off the top of a can of soup with your can opener) and use it to give gifts of marble magnets. What? Never heard of marble magnets? Stay tuned for part two!