I have been relatively quiet for a while on the site, by no means have I been resting on my laurels. I’ve just been trying to push on with my environmental art and design work, and following my environemtal journey of discovery and where it takes me.

First of all, Happy New Year to anyone reading this.  I am so proud of myself for staying true to my beliefs this Christmas. Not only am I pretty poor at the moment, considering I am no longer taking on corporate client work, I managed to get through Christmas without taking on any extra debt or buying a single Christmas card or roll of wrapping paper.  I also had one of the nicest and most humbling Christmases ever.

Mid December I’ll admit my husband I noticed was getting a bit nervous about my suggestions for wrapping all the presents in fabric and making 40% of the gifts myself.  He of course loved the fact that I would be spending much less money this year!  It’s just a change of mind, once you see the results I really don’t know what the big deal is with making the swap to a more eco friendly or sustainable alternative. All it requires is a bit more effort and imagination,  the bonus is you don’t have to spend hours online looking for the perfect gift or sit in traffic jams or spend a small fortune on car parking whilst you shop.

Here is how I did mine this year. First of all I happened to have a lot of fabric left over from previous craft projects. Tartan, red, green, and similar colours that work just fine for Christmas.  I purchased a ball of red wool in town for about £1.50 and I still have half a ball left over for next year too. After a few practices, I managed to conquer wrapping up pretty much any shaped item in a secure way, just using the wool with a few knots and bows.  So that eliminated the need for wrapping paper or cellotape.

All the children’s toys were 2^nd hand this year, courtesy of Ebay. They received 70% of what they asked for and nothing we bought needed batteries.  There response was “awesome!”  No packaging and better still no debt to get them what they wanted.  Christmas outfits were sourced at a local charity shops, as was mine actually!

I did tell most of our not so close relatives not to buy us gifts this year as we were only buying for immediate family and children.  This might seem a bit bah humbug, but with so many people remarrying now-a-days the list of ‘to buy for’ just gets ridiculous, if you buy for one you may as well buy for all. Why bother getting yourself in extra debt if you really can’t afford it? If you can and it makes you happy, then great, go for it!

I made 4 gifts myself this year, I recycled 4 old picture frames that I picked up from a charity shop. The frames were solid and not  in bad shape. I just made images or used photography I knew the person receiving would enjoy. So these are really not designed to my own personal tastes, but then again part of being a good designer is completing the brief that you have….mine was to give them a gift I thought they would like.

I cleaned up the frames, painted them and added decorative finishes, cut the mount frame myself. The final cost of doing these frames was £8.00 – as I happened to just use what I already had in my art supply stock at home.  So that was £2.00 a present, my family seemed really touched that I had made something especially for them…You can read my tutorial on making your own art for the home here.