Gifts Archives - Page 32 of 32 - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Collecting Vintage Charms and Trinkets

May 18, 2009 by Ashley Hackshaw

I collect trinkets. Lots of them. I collect religious medals, vintage charms, old necklace charms and just about anything that can hang from a bracelet or necklace. Sometimes I combine them on necklaces, some make great little gift toppers (I gave my sister-in-law a vintage church charm that opened up to reveal a bride and groom when she got married), and many just sit in a box waiting to be sifted through. I’ve decided to pull a few adorable charms out for some giveaways over the next few weeks. See the end of this post on how to enter!

Below are some of my favorite vintage charms. It is hard to find charms like these now with the moving parts. They just don’t make things like they used to!

Little gas tank with moving heart gauge

Slot machine with colorful moving wheel inside

Camera that opens with film image inside

The next three charms are from my grandmother’s bracelet from the 40’s:

Baby carriage with moving canopy

Cigarette lighter with moving top

Can you guess what the above charm is?

Sewing on Paper…..

April 30, 2009 by Ashley Hackshaw

I love sewing on cardstock because of the sound the needle makes when punching through the paper! Weird, I know. Working on a bunch of cards for Mother’s Day today…. I’ve got a lot of mothers, and grandmothers, and godmothers to cover in our family (if any of my family is reading this….come back after Mother’s Day!)

I printed out a photo of Sienna on cotton fabric and I’ve been stitching these to the blank cards I assembled. If you don’t own a bone folder, you need one! It makes the crease so perfect. Sienna will color the inside and I’ll “pretend” sign her name with a few of the letters backwards. Maybe I’ll stitch some paper flowers to the front or ribbon…..

Note: You can buy cotton fabric sheets at your craft or sewing store that can be used in your inkjet printer. The sheets I used are by Jacquard. They have a paper backing that peels off once after printing.

Update:

I didn’t stop with the Mother’s Day cards. I had the below fabric photos of Sienna left over from Valentines Day and made gift tags for a birthday party this Sunday. They turned out cute….especially with the whole “natural” gift wrapping look. Birthday gift wrap can be so tacky and expensive….I love making it simple. These tags would be great for party favor bags too!

Mac Photo Books

April 8, 2009 by Ashley Hackshaw

I love my Mac. I really, really love my Mac. I love iPhoto. I love Photo Booth. I love iWeb. It makes everything so easy because all the different programs “talk” to each other. Today I realized that I probably need a memory upgrade. I guess having over 4,000 photos and a couple hundred hours of home movies has started to slow down my trusty little computer. That 4,000 doesn’t even include anything from 2007. I already archived those on DVD and sent them to my husband’s office in case the house burns down!

Sorry, this post is starting to sound like a Mac commercial.

Now the real reason for this post….Mac photo books. I love how easy these books are to make and the quality is unbelievable. Once I set the book up by clicking and dragging photos and adding some text, I hit the button “Buy Book” and the published photo book magically shows up on my doorstep a few days later. (Okay, so I had to enter some credit card and shipping information when I first set up my Mac two years ago.) I use iPhoto to make a memory book for Sienna’s grandparents each Christmas. I include all my favorite photos, Sienna’s scanned artwork, and excerpts from my journal.

If you don’t know me then you don’t know that I am obsessively organized. I save everything, label everything, file everything, write down lists of everything….I have notebooks, upon notebooks of stuff. I just have this “thing” about preserving a story, a legacy….it is super-crazy-OCD-nostalgia (read my 2003 artist statement and you’ll see how out of hand it gets at times). When it comes time to put the photo book together each year I have a really hard time narrowing down what to include….I almost have a nervous breakdown when doing it because I just want to include every memory, minute-by-minute. In a perfect world my yearly photo book would be 10,000 pages long (and would probably cost $10,000).

Below are some excerpts from the 2008 book. I couldn’t post the whole thing because it was just too large a file. I hope it will give you some ideas for your own book.
Excerpts From Sienna 2008 Book

If you don’t have a Mac you can download software products such as My Publisher or Kodak Gallery to make a similar photo book. There are so many different things you can do with these programs. Here are just a few ideas….please share more if you have them!

Child’s Art Portfolio: Scan all your children’s drawings and artwork. Add titles, dates and descriptions.

Family Recipe Book: Take pictures of all your favorite dishes and include the recipes.

Story Book: Let your child draw the pictures and dictate the story to you.

Memorial Book: When my grandfather died I took all the best pictures of his infectious smile, the ones with his funny hat, with his roses etc and made huge displays for his wake so that everyone could remember him that way. My next project is to make all of those into a book with the beautiful eulogy quoted throughout.