Painted Bottles and Glass
Aromatherapy Eye Pillows
Pipe Curtain Rods
Art Books & Frames
Personalized Calendars, Stories, and Freezer Jam
Fancy-Dressed Soaps

by Jen Scoville

Project: Art Frame

Supplies: Polaroid i-Zone camera and film (optional, but useful for filling in the gaps); a frame (or make your own from a scrap of wood, a cigar box, etc.); magazines and newspapers; photos; scissors and glue.

Time: 30 minutes to several hours or an evening, depending on the complexity & how many images you have to go through. If you can think of some perfect pictures you already have off the top of your head, it's just a matter of decoration. It will go faster if you're working on several projects at once (as you're looking for images for one person, you're bound to find ones appropriate to others).

Cost: $0 - $10 for the frame, depending on whether you make or buy it; and $1 for glue.

About $24 for the camera and $6 - 8 per roll of film (about a buck more a roll for the sticker film).

Project: Art Book

Supplies: Polaroid i-Zone camera and film (optional but very helpful)); a hardcover book you don't plan to read again (or a blank book); photos; found fabric or interesting paper; magazines and newspapers; scissors and glue.

Time: A few hours to an evening, depending on the size of the book and the story you're telling. Start with a children's book and you'll have an interesting size and fewer pages to fill. Start with a tiny book and you'll have the same benefits and a completely different look.

Cost: $0 - $5 for the a secondhand book; and $1 for glue.

About $24 for the camera and $6 - 8 per roll of film.

Don't have the time but you like the sentiment? Give a do-it-yourself art book as a gift. Buy a blank book, an i-Zone camera and sticker film, and a cool gel pen and package them all together. The recipient can keep a journal or even book punctuated with pictures.

(This is also a great idea for a funky wedding or guest book for a special occasion--have each guest photograph herself--or assign the task to a greeter--when she arrives and sign in next to her sticker.)

It's late, I know. If you want to give homemade gifts for Christmas, you're supposed to plan way ahead--building furniture, painting canvasses, sewing pillows--starting in early February. But forget that. I for one know you'll thrive on meeting a creative challenge this late in the game. And to prove it, I'll give you some personal gift ideas that will not only be appreciated, they'll be cherished as works of art.

For best results, you need a Polaroid camera. Now if you already own a Polaroid camera then go out and stock up on film for it--one roll should be good for a couple of projects. If you don't already own a Polaroid and you're considering buying one for this project, you should, cause they're cheap. But maybe since you have a few choices you'd like to purchase the new very special Polaroid i-Zone camera (around $24), which takes tiny 1x2 inch color pictures. (I've been finding find the novelty of small is really impressive these days.)

1. Once you have the camera, you have to get innovative. The idea is to create sort of a collage, either in a frame that you buy or one that you make. I often make frames out of found objects--pieces of wood, cardboard boxtops, etc. and you can paint them or cover them with colored clay or mismatched buttons. You can even make papier mâché frames that are just as collage-y as the collage you are going to put inside, but this isn't really about frames, so let's get started on the guts.

2. The hardest part is coming up with a concept, and it's important to think hard about the person who the gift is for. If possible, you might be able to trick them into posing for a few photos, or you may already have some photos of them in your possession that you can use. What you need the Polaroid for is context. What does this person like, what are his/her hopes and dreams, do you have any inside jokes together you can illustrate with miniature photos?

The best way to describe the process is to give you an example. I bought a frame at Target, one of those cheap wooden ones with four small, school-picture-type holes, and let's say the gift is for my brother.

3. I need to fill the four holes with relevant images, and since I'm using the small film (you can even get film that comes out as stickers), I also need to put something behind the tiny photos as background. (For background you can use newspaper, magazine pictures, colored paper, printed text, other photos, anything that will look good with your photo on top of it.)

My brother is a fanatic about toy collecting--mostly star wars figures. He also loves his cats (I can get cool artsy pics of both the cats and some of his toys when he's not home). I have an old photograph of him making a very funny face that I can cut to fit so it's just a close-up--not even his ears show--and it looks kind of cool that way. Now I need one more photo that represents our relationship. I've got it--I'll take a funny super close picture of myself and a baby doll (since he's my baby brother and that's always how I think of him), but I'll take it so that only one of my eyes and part of the doll's head shows. (You have to remember to make the photos either artsy and pretentious or funny. They can't be inadvertently cheesy or this project won't work. If you're going to go that route it has to be on purpose.)

If you have more time, and it's a very special person you are trying to impress, it's fun to use this same concept for a homemade book--maybe documenting the history of your relationship. I recently made one of these books for my boyfriend on our second anniversary, and I think he was quite impressed.

1. Start with a book that you are prepared to never read again (it's not ruining, it's adding a whole different dimension) and glue chunks of the pages together so you don't have the pressure of covering every page. It's even better if you choose a book that is symbolic in any way, for example I once made an art book for a best girlfriend and I used an extra copy of Fresh Girls, a novel by Evelyn Lau. It was cool because the name was one allusion, but I could elect to not cover up the words and use some of Lau's own sentences as part of my collage. (You can also buy blank books and very tiny interesting journals at stationary stores or in bookshops if you want to).

2. Then I proceeded to tell the story of how we met through photos of ourselves, pictures from magazines, and my own drawings and writings. You get great ideas just by leafing through magazines and old photos, and then you can...

3. Fill in the gaps with your trusty Polaroid. It was a little time consuming (took me one whole day to put together) but was fun to make and the result was a keepsake that not only tells a very dear story, but is something that is worthwhile to display.