Homemade Christmas Presents 2011 - Bath Salts

Last year, I did crochet for my homemade presents, but this year I have babies and therefore no time.  I still wanted to give homemade Christmas presents, though, as the thoughtfulness of homemade compensates for the lack of money spent.  Minting Nickels has a post on gifts in a jar, which inspired me for this year.  She likes food gifts, but I prefer not to give food, since most of the recipes seem really unhealthy, and because taste preferences and food allergies vary widely and I would hate to get them wrong.  However, she included a link to Martha Stewart's bath fizzies, which I thought looked amazing.  But then I found out that 5 pounds of citric acid cost $20.  Since Martha was talking cups, and this was weight, I wasn't even sure that 5 pounds would be enough for the 7 people I wanted to gift.

So I decided to be less ambitious and make bath salts instead.  I used Martha's recipe, but I substituted ice cream salt for sea salt.  I figure that salt is salt and, as long as no one tries to eat the bath salts, there's no difference except for the massive price difference.  I might try pickling salt if I did it again, since the rock salt was pretty large, and so the salts did not look homogenized because my Epson salt was fine.  They came out really cute:

I especially liked the striped effect I got from layering colored salts and uncolored ones.

Cost: $4.16 each; $29.17 total
Rock Salt: 3.82
Epsom salt: 3.56
Baking Soda:1.06
Essential Oil: 7.89
Food coloring: 3.12
Cute Jars: 9.72


As you can see, the jars were a third of the cost; I could have saved even more by reusing jars.  This was a rush project, though, and I didn't have time to come up with jars this year.  Next year, I think I'll try the bath fizzies, and save up jars, and it will probably end up costing about the same, although, if I have some of the essential oil left, it will cost less.  I've got nearly the whole bottle left, but I use a Fuzzi Bunz Diaper Bag, which has a place to put essential oils to cover the diaper smell, and I am planning to try it out.  If it works, I expect that my essential oil will be depleted by next year.

CNC Pic

By request, the CNC machine in all its glory;)

 Since 100 Centavs was curious, I'm putting up a picture of the CNC machine and linking to a blog post by my husband on some jewelry he did for his mom.  The video in that post shows a brief clip of the CNC in action.

I'm not claiming any credit for this machine - my husband put it together entirely by himself.  Being a bookish, non-mechanical kind of person, I am constantly amazed at what handy people like him can put together in their spare time. 

This is a "poor man's" CNC machine.  As I recollect it, he bought a few kits and random parts, scavenged some parts from his parts pile, stuck them all together, built the frame, and made it go.  The result is a CNC machine built for less than $1K.  It's not as precise as the professionally made ones, but it cost about 5% of a bottom of the line pro model.

Handmade Jewelry

Unknown Hardwood, Finished with Wax

Here is our first try at handmade jewelry.  The wood is about 1/2" in diameter.  We carved the cross using a CNC machine, hand finished and waxed it, hand drilled the sterling silver circle at the top, added the link for the necklace, and put it on a bought sterling silver serpentine chain.

Bloodwood, finished with varnish

Here is version 2, with the same design, but done in Bloodwood and varnished instead of waxed.  The varnish makes it more water resistant (you can shower with it) and shinier.

Based on a perusal of etsy, I'm guessing that this is about a $15 item, including the shipping and chain.  Does that seem reasonable to you?  Which version do you like better?

Homemade Christmas Presents - Fingerless Gloves

This year, I got my homemade Christmas presents done on time.  I think it's a record.

I made the gloves, using this pattern, for my sister-in-law.

I found the pattern to be a bit large around the fingers, so I decreased from the thumb from rounds 22-25, one sc on each side.  I used 100% cotton yarn.

I wanted something a bit more feminine for my aunt, so I replaced the sc with lacy shells, and sized the pattern a bit smaller (she and I both have skinny hands).  I used a bamboo/acrylic yarn for these, so they are fuzzy like wool, but super-soft.  I'm pretty proud of the results.

I already had the yarn for my sister-in-law's present (it matches a scarf that I did for her last year).  I had to re-buy the crochet hook, because I always lose them in between projects, and I bought one skein of yarn for my aunt's gloves, for a total cost of $8.  It would have been about twice that if I'd had to buy the cotton yarn, but I still think I'd have come out ahead versus buying equivalently nice gloves at the store, plus there's the "I thought of you" bonus from homemade presents.   I'm definitely doing these again next year!

Hope you and yours are having a Merry Christmas!

Baby Shower

One of my really good friends from college had a baby shower today. She lives about three hours away, so I pretty much spent the whole day driving and partying.

I made her a baby afgan ... which took all of yesterday to make.
Here it is:

And here is a close-up.

I think it came out really nice, but I haven't had any time to focus on earning more this weekend.  I'm still down about $100, so it looks like I won't quite make my goal.  More about that tomorrow.