Gifts for the Hard-to-Buy-Handmade-For

This time of year I’m always perplexed about how much money is spent on holiday presents that are essentially cheap pieces of crap. The holidays have become so overtly commercialized, and most of the stuff people buy is from a big-box store and made in China. It’s just gross. Bad for the environment, bad for people, and actually makes for bad gifts. (not convinced? read this)

So I always try to buy handmade gifts, or when that fails at least “smart gifts” (will explain more below) for my friends and family. As far as my kids go (ages 7 and 8), it is getting harder every year to do this. There are a lot of handmade baby and toddler items available, but not so much for the school agers. Another group that can be hard to buy for are the teenagers/young adults. But there is hope! Here are a few cool things I found:

Mandala Wooden Puzzle by PuzzleOne

This would make a great gift for a wide age range of kids. I have something similar that my kids received as a gift when they were 3/4, and they still play with it–plus it’s still in such great shape my new little one will enjoy it too!

Socktopus by blackbirdfashion

This is another great gift for a wide age range of kids. I’m getting this for my 8 year old son for Xmas. He collects sock monkeys so this whimsical version will be perfect. They also had a punk rock sock monkey–I’ll save that for when he’s a teenager :)

I Spy Bag by aebaby

I LOVE these toys! I’ve seen these capture the attention of toddlers up to 3rd graders!

When buying handmade for your school-aged child or grandchild just isn’t enough-buy them “smart toys” instead of the plastic junk. Art supplies, science kits, musical instruments, books (the Klutz books/kits are always awesome), etc.

Another hard group to buy for are the teenagers and young adults!!!

Bunny Loves Kitty Pendant by Gingerdead

I have items by this artist at The Eclipse Gallery, and you can click the link above for her online shop. I bought one of these necklaces for my 16 year old niece for her birthday and she loved it.

Circut Board Geek Shirt by nonfictiontees

Getting clothes as a gift is definitely NOT lame when they’re like this.  There is a huge selection of handmade clothing for all ages on Etsy.

Vulture Silkscreen Moleskin Journal by The Crafty Hag.

Every teenager (and adult for that matter)  needs a journal to vent into and sketch in. I have a good selection of this artist’s journals, magnets, pillows, note cards, and more at The Eclipse Gallery–or click the link above for her online shop.

Smart gifts for teens and young adults could include books, art supplies (for example, a screen printing kit would be an awesome gift for art types), or gift cards to a cool handmade shop in your area.

If you live or are visiting Northeast Wisconsin, stop by The Eclipse Gallery for a wide variety of handmade gifts–we have something for every age–from birth to 100.  Buy Local and Buy Handmade this year!

And this I believe: John Steinbeck

Brittany Peterson, Yellow, Blown Glass

I am currently reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck and the following passage really spoke to me. It’s long but worth the read. This meshes with everything I feel about myself, my individuality, my freedom, art, and how important handmade craft, design, and products are to our lives.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then–the glory–so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing are all born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of the man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.

I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Seal Generator

This seals were super fun, easy, and free to make. Go right here to make some yourself.

I think I will make these into stickers…

Resource: LIFE images

Photographer Wallace G. Levison working with his apparatus for measuring the speed of the shutter in his home at 314 Livingston St., Brooklyn, NY.

December 06, 1887

LIFE now has their archives online for free. An amazing resource–10 million pictures stretching from 1860 to present day, with thousands of pictures added everyday. To search life images on Google, simply add “source:life” to any Google image search. Click here for more info.

Can’t find much on Mr. Levison, but would love to know more about him.