THE ALTERED FLEA: handmade Chanukah gifts

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Eight Projects of Chanukah

It's time to countdown to Chanukah. My intention was to post one project every week until Chanukah begins. However, when I looked at the calendar, I realized there are only five weeks until the Festival of Lights!
I'm just going to have to work a little faster in order to create and post eight projects in just over one month. So let's get altering!

The first of my eight projects is called "Chanukah-in-a-Jar." There are many variations of recipes in a jar for delicious cookies, soups, natural scrubs, and more. In fact, I've even altered empty tennis ball cans for brownies-in-a-tennis-ball-can recipes.

For this project, I use a clear plastic pail that is 6" tall with a 4" diameter. It has a lid as well as a handle, which lends itself nicely for attaching ribbons and tags.

Gather craft supplies for embellishing the container including printed and solid scrapbook, glitter and gift wrapping paper, ribbon, punches, stamps, ink, tags, charms, metal labels, etc.

Cut a strip of cardstock 2" x 18". If using a 12" x 12" piece of paper, you will have to cut two pieces and tape them together. Then cut a coordinating piece of your gift wrap or printed paper 1-1/2" x 18" Using a dry adhesive, tape these two long pieces together. Adhere ribbon to center of strip.

Using a 2-1/2" circle punch, cut a circle with glitter paper. Punch out two smaller circles (I used a scalloped punch, too) from the solid cardstock. Stamp image on smaller circle.

Adhere long strips to pail. Also adhere ribbon in the middle of the paper, finishing at the same seam as the paper. Then adhere the circles to the pail, covering up the seams.

Using varied textures and widths, cut 6" strands of coordinating ribbon to pail handle. Cover the inset of the lid with paper with mod podge. When dry, adhere label printed on cardstock and metal label holder to lid. Tie charm to metal holder.

Stamp "Happy Hanukkah" and "To/From" images to tags.

Decoupage top of the dreidel, using 1-1/4" square punch. Punch a small hole in center of the paper square, which will fit over the dreidel stem.

Then choose the "ingredients" for your jar. I suggest an entire box of 44 menorah candles (enough candles for each night), large dreidel, matchbox, chocolate gelt and candle blessings.

For the blessings, I printed the Hebrew, transliteration and translation on both sides of a 4" x 6" cardstock, rolled it up and tied it with blue & white twine.