Martha Stewart's Handmade Holiday Crafts - Editors of Martha Stewart Living

Oh, I fully admit it - I love crafting and making stuff. When I get my hands on a book like Martha Stewarts' Handmade Hoiday Crafts, I wait for just the right time to read it. I then flip through randomly stopping at ideas that catch my eye first time through. When I pick it up the second time (again at the right time) I read it from cover to cover.

And there are some fantastic ideas in this latest Martha offering. The book is geared towards crafts for all the major holidays - Valentine's Day, Mother and Father's Days, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, hanukkah, New year's, Easter and yes the one that is fast approaching - Christmas.

And not every one is geared towards adults. There are lots of child friendly crafts that you can do with a small person in your life. There were some excellent ideas that I can see being used at the library - a doily as a stencil, thumb print hearts, heart and lollipop flowers and more. Ideas for colouring eggs? Oh boy, there were soooo many! I think I'll try decopaging some this coming year. Cards for every occassion with patterns for the pop ups featured. I'm not sure I could duplicate some of the elaborate pumpkin carving designs, but they're fun to look at. I have a bunch of buttons just begging to be used - the Mother's Day card is perfect.

And lots of suggestions for Christmas and New Year's. There were some easy ideas for gift wrapping, cards and tags. And a really cute idea using wide ribbon as a gift bag for a gift certificate.

I tried one of the gift tag ideas, using shipping tags, painting them and sticking on a piece of greenery. (The one on the left really needs a gold star on top)And I picked up some cookie cutters from the dollar store too. You could put some pretty Christmas paper behind to make ornaments. Or a photo, as I did - to remind a certain 20 something son of his time as one of Santa's elves! A great reference book to have on the shelf year round.Peek inside the book.