craftgrrl | Christmas crafts and llamas

This year I'm serving in an AmeriCorps program where I work as a tutor and after school teacher in an urban school. I taught a class called Amazing Animals for 2nd and 3rd graders, and after discovering that classes went much more smoothly if they got to make things, I incorporated more arts and crafts into the class. We spent quite a while on llamas in the class, partly because of the complexity of this project, and partly because I decided to show The Emperor's New Groove as a preview to the llama class. But the kids loved doing the llamas, and they had something to show off at Family Night!

It was a fun project, and since I rely heavily on the internet for ideas for game and craft ideas for my class, I thought I'd pay it forward by making a tutorial of how I made the llamas. Click here to see the tutorial on my blog"

I also made my example llama from the tutorial into a Christmas tree ornament.

And, since I am on the AmeriCorps budget, I opted to not do Christmas gifts this year. Luckily, I had one side of the family actually requesting that we not do gifts for them because they are trying to de-clutter their lives. I'm sure it's also partly because they know that us kids don't exactly have a ton of money, so that's nice of them. However, I still really enjoy giving gifts, so I decided I would bake cookies. My boyfriend and I had been planning on doing it anyway.

We made gingerbread cookies with royal icing. This was my first time making gingerbread cookies and royal icing, so it was a learning experience. My best friend helped me frost them, and we both took a rather whimsical approach to how good the cookies needed to look. First we made the icing too lumpy, then we added water to "fix" it and it became too runny. But it gave us a lot to laugh at, and that is the best part.

Our creative solution to the too-runny icing:

My (23-year-old) brother requested that we make him a Pokemon cookie, so I used the last blob of frosting to fashion a pikachu. I was all proud of myself for getting the shape down so well (though I had to omit a zigzag in the tail), but then the frosting happened. He thought it was awesome anyway, bragged about it to his friends, and saved it for a couple of days before eating it.

And then the next day I rolled out the second batch of gingerbread dough and made some more traditionally frosted gingerbread cookies to combine with the crazy ones. The best ones got packed up as gifts before I thought to take pictures, but here are some of the best left over. I made a kitty out of the dough left over when the lump got almost too small to roll out again.

I also made some gift boxes out of old check boxes. I wrapped white printer paper around the lids as a base, then glued magazine cutouts to it, then "laminated" it with clear packing tape.

For pictures of all the boxes individually and of all the sides, check out my Flickr photo stream. Sorry for the long post, I didn't realize it was going to get so long! Hope you enjoyed!
Now I gotta go celebrate one last family Christmas. Merry Christmas!