Wifely Christmas presents 2012

As mentioned in yesterday's post, the gifts my wife and I exchanged on Christmas deserved their own post.

As far as the gift my wife gave me, I knew where it had come from (a vintage fair that happens every Thursday in Oxford), I knew it was rather heavy and I knew roughly how large it was as it happened to reside in the bottom of our wardrobe for around a month and a half! Aside from these things, I had absolutely no idea what I'd be unwrapping on Christmas day, but was über über excited to unwrap a beautiful typewriter! This was an especially thoughtful present on my wife's behalf as there had been one in a Grenoble shop that I walked past every day for a couple of months, longing for. My wife had also repainted, oiled and changed the ribbon of this typewriter, making it (presumably) more gorgeous.

As my wife's birthday is at the end of October, I sometimes find it difficult to think of something to give her for Christmas. This was the case for quite a while, until I decided on making a snowglobe and some silhouette art. Both of these ideas came from my favourite inspirational site, Pinterest! Even once I'd decided on making each of these gifts, I wasn't entirely sure about how they would look, so I went for a supply buying trip one weekend, having made a rough list of the things I needed.

In the end, both of the presents were made over two evenings in December, when I had the flat to myself as my wife was back in Kent attending interviews. As such, I spent those evenings fully emersed in my crafting, and completely forgot to take any photographs! Fail.

I made the silhouette pictures first, using frames that I purchased at Wilkinson. I knew that I didn't want a back to the frames so that they could ultimately go in any room as the wall colour would simply show through the frame. I therefore used the glass from two seperate frames to sandwich the silhouette and lettering, making two pieces - one of my wife and one of myself. The silhouette and lettering themselves were made from printed images which I cut out using my craft knife and then spray-painted black. This was a simple enough process, with the trickiest part being to make each part the right size, but after a little trial and error I ended up with the design I wanted and here are the finished products:

Moving on to the second part of the gift-making, the snowglobe. To make this, I bought glycerin, a large jam jar, some decorative crystals and smallish Christmas decorations, and some silver glitter. I also knew that I wanted to put an image of my wife and I in the snowglobe, so used one of us from last winter in the snowy mountains of Grenoble. I cut out the image in a size small enough to fit in the jar, and then laminated it twice to protect it from the water. I then used my hot glue gun to glue the image onto the pre-sprayed lid of the jar, proceeding to use the crystals to stabilise the image. During this part, I tried to ensure that I attached each crystal securely as I knew that the jar would obviously be shaken and I didn't want things coming loose. Once the glue was dry and everything had settled, I put some silver glitter and some star confetti that I already had into the jar, and filled it up with water and a little glycerin. I then checked on the water level by screwing the lid on, and once I was satisfied with it, I hot glued around the edge of the jar and screwed the lid back on. Ta-da, one finished snowglobe!

So there you have it, wifely presents of Christmas, 2012 :D