Handmade Holiday: Bookmarks, Magnets, and Shortbread

Almost a month after the fact, I am finally finishing putting up our holiday crafts. I know, so uncool, but "late" is a perpetual state of being for me, so I, for one, am not in the least bit surprised. This is the last one, I promise! And these are simple little random projects, so I will make it brief. Kaia made Papa and me bookmarks, (gosh, was I surprised when I unwrapped it! ;) ) I cut long rectangles out of stiff paper, and she punched a hole in the top of each, and drew on them. She wrote "Mama" and "Papa" on one side of each of ours, respectively, and drew a bunny on the opposite sides.

When she was finished, I "laminated" them with a strip of packaging tape on both sides, trimmed them to size, punched the hole back out, and Kaia threaded and tied a few strands of yarn at the top. She was really happy to make and wrap something for us.

 For my Brother-in-Law, who brews beer, we collected different bottle caps to make magnets with. We even got other people to save some for us. (let's just say... I wouldn't drink some of the beers these caps belonged to. ;) ) We included some local Michigan brews, which he lives away from now, and glued magnets in the backs to make a set. I ended up putting a good dollop of glue in each, letting that dry, then adding another to attach the magnets with so that they would be flush with the caps instead of inset. Without doing so, they would stick to the fridge, but were not strong enough to hold anything.

We also made vegan-style Scottish shortbread, mmm! We cut some into snowflake cookies, and I also tried my hand at using our large wooden shortbread mold. It was a lot harder to accomplish than I had bargained for! As a matter of fact, when I say, "tried my hand", there's more to it than that. I even ended up putting the thing on a stool, climbing on top of it with my knees, and putting all my weight on it to push the design into the dough. I took a hammer to the back of it. I surely must be going wrong somewhere, I'm pretty sure shortbread is not supposed to be forged, but I was unable to find any useful information on it. I completely forgot to take any pictures of the finished products, (sad time,) but here is one of Kaia helping make the dough, and our wooden shortbread mold.

That's all I am putting up for this year, I also made some mugs, and a few other random things, but I am beyond ready to move on here. Next: unicorns, rainbows, fairies, dragons and other fantastical things, yay!