I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I know I did.  We had a fairly quiet Christmas eve.  Greg’s mom joined us at our house for dinner and opening of presents.  Santa came over night and filled stockings and left some presents for the boys.  Greg’s mom came back (she lives near by) Christmas morning and ate breakfast with us.  In the afternoon we packed up all of us and the dogs and headed to my parents house.  A much more chaotic evening as my brother and his family and his wife’s family all came to my parents house.  There were 15 of us for dinner and more exchanging of gifts.  Noah, my 4 year old nephew was unwrapping gifts as fast as he could only to discover that we got him (and my parents too) the same lego set that Santa brought.  What a sad little face when he realized both lego sets were duplicates and he had nothing new to play with.  Ally, my 3 year old niece was a little bit slower with opening her gifts and happy with her doll, books, and the little bag I made her.

The non-toy gift that I got them were these Alphabet Letter frames – well they aren’t really frames but I added pictures to them.  This was a project that my friend Wendy designed for her gift making class.  I decorated an ‘A’ for Ally and an  ‘N’ for Noah.

For Noah’s letter I used the Pawstively Prints Designer Series paper to cover chipboard stars.  I sanded the edges and sponged the stars.   The stars were cut using the Big Shot and the Stars #2 die using the Long Board chipboard pieces that you can order from the Stampin’ Up! catalog.

I stamped sailboats – colored with Stampin’ Write Markers on Whisper White card stock and cut those out.   The ‘N’ was stamped with Black StazOn ink using several stamp sets – Extreme Elements, Priceless, Lovely Letters Alphabet, and Just Perfect Alphabet.

The photos are matted with Pumpkin Pie, So Saffron, and Ballet Blue card stock.  I printed the photos using a collage format so it printed a variety of small sizes that worked great for this project.

For Ally’s letter I used the Tea Party Designer Series Paper to cover chipboard flowers.  The flowers were cut using the Big Shot and the Stampin’ Up! Blossom Party die from pieces of the Long Board Chipboard.  The flowers were sanded and sponged.

The ‘A’ is stamped with Black StazOn ink using the Priceless stamp set.  The name is stamped using the Lovely Letters Alphabet and the Just Right Alphabet.  A Rhinestone brad accents the center of the large flower.

The pictures are matted in So Saffron, Pretty in Pink, Certainly Celery and Almost Amethyst.

The letters set inside the stand so you can put them on a shelf or dresser in each of their bedrooms.  They turned out very nice and I hope that they will like looking at them.  I tried to choose photos that I had taken so that they were photos that their mom and dad hadn’t seen before.

I gave several hand-made gifts this year.  This was one of them.

I need to clean my craft room – I have lots to do in here – working on projects for the Create with Connie & Julie class.  Don’t forget to sign up for early bird pricing!