Posted on: Monday, December 20, 2004
Get creative with these holiday gift suggestions
By Marylou Tousignant
Washington Post
Here's good advice for families with teens and preteens at home: Turn off the tube; jettison the joystick, and ignore those instant messages. Instead, slide up your sleeves, grab the glue gun and call forth your family creativity. Handicrafts are more popular than ever, making these holiday gift suggestions for handy types a good, active option for this time of year.
LA Times/Washington Post • If embroidery is more your style, check out "Kids' Embroidery," $19.95 (7 and older), by Kristin Nicholas. It covers the ABCs of needlepoint, cross-stitch and free-form stitchery, with some fancy moves tossed in. Projects include greeting cards, journal covers, pillowcases — even lampshades and wall decorations. You could host a party and have all the guests work on something special. C'mon, it'll be a stitch! • Scrapbooking has never been more popular. Here are two ways to go: • My Overstuffed Life, by Jakks Pacific, $19.99, with add-ons from $3.99 (7 and older) is like a scrap-purse. Choose your style (Hot Mod was ours), then stuff it with photos, stickers, beads and other trinkets. The starter kit comes with five pages, but you can always add more. • It's My Life Scrapbook Kit by Faber-Castell, $19.95 (7 and older) has all the fixings for 24 pages of must-keep mementos. Decorative scissors, a photo-crop guide and tiny treasure envelopes will help you tell The Story of You. LA Times/Washington Post • You can make terrific T's at home. All you need is the paint-and-iron kit TShirt Art, by Klutz, $19.95 (8 and older), a shirt you already own and a parent's OK. More than 250 reusable designs and six vibrant paints will more than get you started. Don't like T's? The patterns also work on jeans, caps, purses and book covers. • One person's throwaway is another's prized possession — and keeps the world's trash heap from growing. That's the idea behind "Recycled Crafts Box" by Laura C. Martin, $10.95 (7 and older), a guide to 40 cool things made of things no one else wants. There's stuff for boys, too: bottle bugs, a cardboard castle, drums, guitars, and stilts made from paint cans. And there are good suggestions for stretching Earth's resources. Chapters on paper, metal, plastic and fabric tell their history and uses and how to recycle them.
• "Best Friends Forever" by Laura Torres, $13.95 (9 and older) is a book for you and your BFF. What? You don't have a Best Friend Forever? Maybe you will after you surprise her (or him) with something you made. Examples: Shadowbox photo tins and name frames. Sock bunnies and dragonfly pencils. Fizzy bath bombs and pet collars. Bottlecap magnets and decorated hair sticks. With 199 projects to choose from, you and your BFF will be busy friends forever.
• Knitting is not just for grandmas anymore. Teens and preteens love this timeless activity. If you'd like to try your hand, "Knitting," by Klutz, $24.95 (10 and older), a book by Anne Akers Johnson will have your needles click-clacking in no time. The kit has easy-to-follow instructions and six fun projects (hat, scarf, two purses, sunglass case and cell phone sock). Included: needles, crochet hook, buttons and 210 yards of yarn — enough to make something pretty and give the cat a toy to play with.
Putting together a scrapbook is a fun project for all ages. Starter kits come with scissors and a guide to cropping photos.
• It takes years to master the paper-folding art of origami. But thanks to the kit Finger Magic, $11.99 (7 and older), by California designer Cindy Ng, you can create a menagerie of paper pigs, fish, turtles, elephants, bunnies and frogs in minutes. (Ng can fold a frog in 56 seconds!) Other kits let you make tulips, hearts, greeting cards and more. They come with pre-printed paper so — assuming you've folded everything correctly — your fish will have scales, your turtle a tail, and your elephant a trunk.
Knitting is not just for grandmas anymore ... teens and preteens love it. "Knitting" has easy-to-follow instructions for six fun projects.
