I cannot EVEN begin to express how excited I am to have THE Annetta Bosakova on MY blog. Uh, you DO know WHO Annetta is! Right?! She is only one of the most expressive, inspiring photographers I have ever met. We became friends over the Instagram world. I can seriously stare at her pictures for hours! They feel like you have leaped into a story book. A perfect complete fairy tale you don't ever want to leave! She can make my big toe look like the most magical thing ever. No really...her eye for beauty is unbelievable! I feel very honored to have her here as my FIRST guest for the Handmade for the Holiday's series!! Please be sure to visit her on Facebook and Instagram. While your at it go ahead and drool over every single image on her website too!
                  
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Every year I want to decorate my house for the holidays. I want my presents to be like the ones you see on Pinterest. I want my house to be full of the holiday beauty, but then I think realistically. I don't want to be spending hours decorating, shopping for decorations and spending all that money on the perfect gift embellishment at Anthropology. I want to instead be spending that time with my family making memories, getting them better gifts that actually matter to them, and enjoying the holidays myself without the loaded amount of stress. This year I did decide to have Pinterest worthy wrapped gifts, but without spending large sums of cash or time and I would like to share with you how I am doing it!

The best way to get the most out of the holidays is to look outdoors and to shop thrifty. That's what I did to get my Pinterest wrapped look for my gifts. Did you ever notice how many lace curtains Goodwill has in their fabric section? I did! I went out and bought 4 lace curtains to cut up into strips to make the pretty bows that will go on all my gifts and it only coast me $10. I will now have many upon many yards of lace, enough to make a lace garland or maybe two! I also went for a nice and relaxing drive around the neighborhood to forage for some fallen pinecones and came home with a trunk load. Those pinecones will now grace every gift I give this year. It cost me only a few gallons of gas!

Now for the fun part, making your own picture gift tags to go along with the lace bows and pinecones or however your gorgeous gift will look like.

You will need:
 - large gift tag  punch
 - desired images printed on photo paper
 - pretty scrapbook paper for the back of gift tag
 - glue stick
 - eyelets
 - string
 - scissors
 - hammer or eyelet & snap punch

How to:
Pick the images you want to use as gift tags. Align your images onto an 8x11 paper using an image editing program. (I put my images into Photoshop Elements and printed test pages until I had everything just right, took me two tries.) Once your pictures are printed, as shown in step two, you want to punch out all you pictures out. Then punch out the backs for your tags on pretty scrapbook paper. Step four has two steps in it, you want to glue the picture tag and the pretty scrapbook paper together so that your picture has a pretty back where you can write who the gift is for and whom it is from. The second step is hammering the eyelets or you can use the eyelet & snap punch. The last step is step five and all you have to do is string your desired string you want to use for the tag.

Now you have the perfect gift thats beautiful, thrifty with the perfect touch of nature to it. The best part is you can make it a craft party with your kids!