It's starting to feel like Christmas...

... or maybe just finals.

I'm really craving a big project. Something I can pour my heart and soul into, slave away over, and feel really happy with when it's all done. Only, I don't know what I want to do and I really don't want the lingering mess of a big project.

That happens to me a lot. Especially right now during finals week. I finished the final project for my class in Assessment and my Lunar Geology course has been done for a week, but the Hubs is in the throws of studying for the one class that determines if he graduates in 2.5 years or if that will be delayed for some as yet undetermined amount of time. Every time things get busy and stressful, I crave an escape. Do you do that too?

Instead of jumping into something large and all consuming, I've filled my life with tiny little projects that make me feel like I'm accomplishing something creative even though my mental energy is spent elsewhere. Lately, it's gift wrap.

We're going cheap on Christmas this year. No gifts for each other (a small trip instead paid for with frequent flyer miles), very few gifts for the kids (who will get spoiled rotten anyway between Grandparents and their other parents), and small gifts for family. I decided not to buy gift wrap, especially after I saw a picture of this event at Anthropologie where they made stamped gift wrap. I fell in love with the gold on kraft look and embraced it fully. That's right, our holiday gifts are being wrapped in paper grocery sacks this year.

I've done it before.

My family never had a ton of extra money. We lived in a nice suburban neighborhood but most of our rooms were lacking furniture and what we did have was the hand-me-downs my parents got when they were married. We weren't poor, just fiscally responsible in a rapidly becoming less so 80's world. My dad is a meticulous saver. That is a great thing since on more than one occasion he was laid off and couldn't find work for over a year because he was "overqualified," yet we never lost the house or had to take other drastic measures. Since I've not found work for the last year I can relate a little bit more than I ever expected to. As a kid, my mom would have me color on grocery bags for gift wrap, not to save money, but to be cute. Now I'm doing it to both save on money and feel artsy glamorous.

All it took was a few paper grocery sacks, a bottle of gold acrylic craft paint, and my daughter's paint sponges.

I really didn't like it as it sat there. I know I'm being cheap, but I really didn't want it to feel cheap. After I let it dry, wrapped the gifts, tied them in a ribbon, and added a little Oregon football ornament. Then, I was hooked. I stamped the next set in stars, and the last in polka dots. I can't decide if I like the diamonds or dots better. Instead of a tag I used a single letter sticker and wrote the recipients name on it with a sharpie.

Ok, that was pretty fun.

My SIL loves black and white, so for her family I did black prints on kraft paper. It didn't look too hot at the beginning...

But I really like how it looks once it's used.

I simply embellished them with a little ribbon (black metallic curling ribbon for the kids, red loopy ribbon for my SIL) and carried over the single monogram theme. These are plain chipboard letters that I, again, wrote the name on in sharpie. The santa tags I whipped up the night my husband came home and surprised me with Adobe CS5! They add just a tiny bit of whimsy and gave me something to play around with. I'm still getting used to the differences between Illustrator and the o-l-d version of Corel Draw that I have used for years.

If you want to use the tags too, you can print them here:

Whimsical Santa Gift Tags

All in all, I am loving this. I'm almost wishing we were having a bigger Christmas in our house so I could stamp more paper. How are you wrapping gifts this year?