Thrusday, December 24, 1998
'Easy' Christmas gifts quite a chore
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LAKESIDE PARK — Now I know why people kept giving me that look.
“Oh, yeah,” they'd say, after I described my plans. “I did that one Christmas.”
That was their mouths talking. Their expressions said, “You poor fool.”
What's with the pity? I wondered. And what do they mean, “one year?” Why only one? Isn't making your own Christmas presents the ideal way to spend the holidays?
Two hundred yards of fishing line and five pounds of fabric paint later, I am wiser. Not to mention tired, speckled with glitter and a little high on glue.
The situation is not entirely my fault. OK, I know I shouldn't be so hard on myself. The situation isn't at all my fault.
I blame the state of my Christmas presents on those pretty little craft books that make everything look easy, then call for materials unavailable anywhere in Middle America.
The pretty-book people must be conspiring with the nervous-breakdown doctors, because one practically leads to the other. This is because every project requires at least one of those elusive ingredients. Things like Belgian straw or antique drawer pulls or remnants from grandma's quilt basket.
My downfall was linen book-binding tape.
Before I needed this, I was full of enthusiasm. For months, I had been collecting flowers and leaves, then pressing them between books.
Never mind that my books are now falling apart at the spines and leaking chrysanthemum juice. The pressing worked. My house is awash in bits of nature, and it is beautiful.
I also managed to order 70 pieces of glass ahead of time, which means they arrived two weeks before C-Day.
The next part would be easy, I thought. As per the pretty books, I would put the leaves and flowers between glass, seal them up with tape and — voila! Leaves and flowers between glass.
My book suggested the aforementioned book-binding material.
“What? Linen what?” said somebody from one of the big craft stores.
“No respectable book binder uses that stuff,” sniffed another helpful person, from a book bindery in Cincinnati.
Finally I turned to Kinkos, which sold me strips of fabric tape.
“It's heat activated,” a clerk said.
“Yeah, yeah,” I thought. Whatever. Just give me the tape.
So it's a week before C-Day and I'm wielding an iron at the kitchen table, trying to get the tape straight on the edges of the glass, keep the stuff inside the glass from slipping and avoid sending myself to the hospital. The result was a gummy, crooked mess.
Finally I abandoned the book-binding tape and improvised. Then I took the finished product over to my friend Con nie for a viewing.
“Can I offer some constructive criticism?” she asked.
“Oh, um ... sure.” I said, bursting with enthusiasm for the idea.
She pointed to the silvery border around my picture. It was quite elegant, I thought.
“This looks like duct tape,” she said.
So much for that.
Connie, bless her heart, is at least the opposite of the craft books. She never makes a suggestion without having the right materials to back it up.
She is, in fact, one of those Women with Lots of Miscella neous Stuff. I'm talking sand, bobeches, parts of a cherub costume, extra brass elephants, cool martini glasses, nearly identical pairs of black shoes and so many hair barrettes that you'd think she was harboring Rapunzel.
Connie lent me some black electrical tape. It does look better.
On to my next problem: how to string the glass together. I wanted three pictures in a vertical row, so they would dangle in my loved ones' windows. But what to attach them with?
My last resort involved fishing line. Lots and lots of it.
Did you know fishing line is practically invisible? And did you know it's really hard to tie a knot in it, if you're not a fisherperson?
I now have a great deal of fishing line lying around, although I'm not sure where because I can't see it. And I'm giving single pictures to my loved ones. They can do whatever they want with them. If they want to string them together, fine. They can figure it out.
I'm starting to suspect this make-your-own-gifts thing is more about me than them.
I didn't want to go to the stores this Christmas. I didn't want to buy the same old stuff. Oh, sure, the pictures will be OK and my family will coo over them for a few seconds. They will feel loved. But that doesn't mean they'll consider the gifts thoughtful, in the sense that I read their minds or anything.
Which gives me an idea. Maybe, just maybe, what they really wanted this year was some fishing line.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE
