DIY or Die this holiday season

 I made a genuine effort to make all of my family's gifts or do something for them this past Christmas. I managed to only buy 3 specific gifts this year and I only had to buy about $30 worth of supplies to make my sisters' and nieces' earrings. Of course, I own a bajillion weird craft and art supplies so that surely helped to make everything on the cheap.  It was very fulfilling to use all this stuff that I've had laying around and to utilize some rusty skills.  It definitely took a lot more time to get all these done, but it was worth it.

I re-burned the edges of this bicycle painting for Jarod and added some touchups to the bike and maps.

I asked my sister what I could make for her husband and all she told me was he liked dragons and has been sketching with my niece lately. So I bound some textured drawing paper together and made him a personalized cover with a dragon.

  

 I made all my sisters and nieces earrings this year. I put 4 buttons for my sisters' earrings to represent us 4 sister and 3 buttons for each of my nieces' earrings to represent the 3 of them.  I got to work on a lot of wire bending for the hanging earrings. I even made my sister, Jill, special hooks to fit through her gauge 2 tunnels.  My nieces are 4 and 7 so I wanted them to have flat earring that weren't too big.

                        

My other big gift, which I forgot to take photos of the finished product, I spent Christmas Eve cleaning out my old room, removing all the Buffy memorabilia, and repainted over all my teenage art mess. I filled up their trashcan twice and their recycling bin and there's still some things that need to be gone through.  However, it's pretty much a nice guest/kids room for my nieces now. I was able to move some clutter from some of the other rooms and put it in my old room to use it, like a toy box and tiny rocking chairs. There's still a list of little things left to do but overall it's a big improvement.

In other news, I'm getting my submission together for the Tulane Film and Arts Festival. Aaaaand, I'm donating some of my art pieces to be auctioned off for the Swan River Arabi Community Center. The Arabi location is an entirely donation based yoga community center. The fundraising auction will be on January 20th starting at 5:30 PM with a yoga class at 6PM and yummy food prepared by Haiyan for after. If you're able, you should definitely check it out.