Apart from being with family and eating ridiculous amounts of food, and wearing pretty dresses, my favourite part about Christmas is the build up.
I don't usually get terribly excited about Christmas but I've been excited since the Christmas things started coming out on the shelves at Oxfam in late October, so I've had a lot of excitement stored up in my sleeves.

I absolutely love giving presents, but I detest spending money on them.
And as I'm a 'poor student', I don't a great deal of money to actually spend on presents.
This year I decided I'd make my own.
Now, I absolutely love making things and just generally making a mess, but making presents that don't look like a proper mess, or things that other people would appreciate is hard because not everyone thinks like myself.
I have a few friends who wouldn't appreciate, or even know what to do with, a secret book with a hollowed out compartment. However I have a friend who absolutely loved it when I made her one.
I got this absolutely lovely Pear's Cyclopedia from Candle Lane Books in Shrewsbury for 25p and, having got it home without getting too attatched to it, set to work on making a secret compartment inside.

Candle Lane Books (isn't it pretty?)

My Stanley knife blade was knackered by the time I'd finished and I had to use a bread knife in the end, because it was a thick book.
I decorated it with lace and added cute things to the inside and whatnot and, in my excitement forgot to take a photo, so I had to borrow one from Caitlin (I hope she doesn't mind)

For my friends from secondary school, whom I invited round in the christmas holidays, I made Rocky Road for, which seemed to go down a treat, as no one complained.
For my very best friend, who lives in Belgium, I bought her a journal and wrote her a postcard for every month of next year (she is under instructions not to read them until the corresponding month) and put our addresses in and gave her some envelopes and things and decorated the inside covers. She cried when I gave it her, which wasn't the desired effect, but I think it will mean more to her than a christmas decoration or something simular.

I love making cards as well, I hate the ones you get from the shop.
I made a silly stencil from The Snowman and went a little mad with a sponge and some white paint on black cards that I got from The Works (complete with black envelopes) for 99p.
And that gave me an excuse to use my mother's silver gel pen (I adore gel pens) and write little things on them, which served for a few relatives and Rocky Road munching friends.
I printed a picture of a reindeer's head off and doused it in glitter (like it had tinsel round it's antlers) and pretend baubles. That was a lot of fun.
And I exhausted my supply of green stamps making christmas tree shapes and decorating them in the same fashion.

Gosh, as my first post, this was a little full on, I apologise.

~ I doubt the rest of my blog will be all about making things, but I'm sure it will crop up again the future ~