Is there anything better than a heartfelt, homemade gift made especially for you? At the library’s Makerspace, we believe that the best gifts are made by your own hands. The number of items you could create here are virtually infinite—bound only by your imagination. It’s a bit like Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole, except that here you are the elves making the gifts!
While you can make anything your heart desires at the Makerspace, we thought we would share some of our favorite Christmas gifts to make. These projects don’t take a lot of time or technical know-how. We can walk you through the process of making the items and have templates prepared for these projects.
Cricut Christmas Tree Gift Box
Want to give several small gifts filled with sweet treats, or perhaps a gift card in a more festive container? You can use the Cricut craft cutter to crease & cut cardstock paper into a shape you can then fold into a beautiful gift box.
Our template will cut the paper and the creases will indicate where to fold the paper. Then, you fill the tree with your gifts and tape the bottom closed. You can use any cardstock you want, making the trees completely your own. You will need to bring your own paper, or pay for a sheet at the Makerspace.
Lithophane Ornament
Using your own images, you can create a plastic lithophane ornament to hang on your Christmas tree, window, or any light source. A lithophane is molded artwork in thin plastic that can be seen clearly when backlit with a light source.
We can help you upload your image to an online lithophane generator, which will convert the image to a 3D file. Once downloaded, we load the file into our 3D printer slicing software, prepare the file, and start it printing on the 3D printer.
3D printing is slow and can take a few hours, but in the end you will have a one-of-a-kind gift. You will need to pay for the plastic filament used in your 3D print. An ornament will cost approximately $1.50 in filament.
Magnets & Pins
Use the Makerspace’s button machine to create 2.25″ magnets and pin buttons featuring your own images. You will need to print out the images on regular copy paper and cut them into 2.5″ circles, after which we load them into the button machine.
You will hand press the button pieces together to create a unique pin, or attach the adhesive magnetic backing to make a fridge magnet. Materials for each pin set cost $0.50 and each magnet set is $1.00.
With 3D printers, craft cutters, film, video and audio digitizers, cameras, computers, and more in the Makerspace, you can make so many fun things for Christmas. For Makerspace hours and full lists of available equipment, click the button below.
