Personalizing Christmas Gifts

Making a personalized Christmas gift is always fun and it adds that special touch that seems to being going by the way of the dinosaur. Finding new Christmas crafts ideas can be exciting and challenging. With the economy being tight, you can make a personalized Christmas gift for a whole lot less than you can buy them. If you need ideas, just look through some craft books or do a computer search online.

I remember when I was much younger and my standing Christmas gift for my father was to get him new hankies, which he used instead of paper Kleenex. So one year when ball point paints were big, I bought red, green and gold paint pens. I purchased the typical man's white hankie 6-pack to decorate them for my father. On a piece of paper, I designed two different Christmas tree bulbs, one red and the other green with gold designs. Once I perfected the design, I would lightly trace it onto the corner of a hankie. Since I did not have tracing paper, I would take a pencil and rub the lead on the reverse side of my design sheet. Then I would lightly re-trace my pattern onto the hankie. I then colored the bulbs, three red the others green and put a gold cap on each. The following year, I bought a silver ball point paint pen and on my father's hankies, I wrote his name on the corner in a fancy script. I did three in silver and the others in gold.

These gestures of personalizing my father's Christmas gifts must have made a big impression on him. A couple of month's ago when I visited my father and washed some whites, I found that he still uses three of those hankies. I asked him about them and he said because they were from his little girl, they were very special to him. I made those hankies over 30 years ago. My father still lives independently and recently turned the young age of 90.