Homemade christmas gift ideas, to-go boxes and purses… Oh my!

Well, I have been busy! Over the thanksgiving weekend I have been brainstorming homemade gift ideas and I have been getting ready for an upcoming craft fair/ holiday sale. We did not get any snow as was predicted so we kept busy an entertained by rearranging the bedroom so it was more feng shui. Oh, our finch eggs have not hatched yet, I know many have been wondering about this.. We have 3 new eggs now in addition to the one that should be hatching.

Anyway, I have also been exploding with gift giving ideas this holiday season! I just taught myself how to fold little “Chinese food” type to-go boxes that I plan to stuff with goodies (maybe pecan buds and cookies or some homemade fudge) and give away this holiday. I’ll share how to make your own below.

I also read about making little handbags from old wool sweaters and thought I would give it a try. I went to the local thrift store and bought all the fun knit and wool sweaters I could find, they sell clothes by the pound there soI go lots of sweaters! These sweater purses are super cute, you can out gifts in them like bath sets or an assortment of fluffy socks or whatever else you can think of. You can also make matching gloves to go with this purse out of the sleeves of the sweater! These look so cute an cozy and are super easy to make!

To make the origami box with fold down lid follow these instructions: I am also planning to make a video of this fold because it’s difficult to explain and is easier to show, besides I am a visual learner so videos help me. This craft can be done with card stock, origami paper or just plain old computer paper (or old catalogs if you want to recycle). I used computer paper in the video.

1. Start out with a perfect square piece of paper.
2. Fold the lower left corner up to the upper right corner, repeat this for the lower right and upper left corners. This will leave you with an X running through the center of your square piece of paper.
3. Next fold the trip of your lower left corner into the center so that the point is just touching the center of the X you just created. Repeat this for each of the 4 corners.
4. Now unfold all the corners, you will see 4 squares inside on the inside of the paper and 2 triangles on each corner of the paper.
5. Now fold the tip of your lower left corner to the newly formed line just under the opposing corner. Repeat this for each of the 4 corners.
6. Keeping the 4 center boxes flat fold each side of the box up and crease the square box in between so the sides flap folds out. Repeat this for each of the 4 sides.
7. Fold the side box flaps and glue
8. Fold the top box flaps in an hole punch them so they can be tied with ribbon.
9. Decorate your box and fill with goodies!

I had planned to publish the instructions for the cozy sweater purse but this post became rather long and for the sake of the sanity of my readers I put the instructions in a separate post so they could be found more easily.