Oh you deadline pushers, you last-minute doers! Once again Christmas is near and you’ve found yourself without a gift to give. Don’t worry, the Sun has a gift for you. Find inspiration in the pages of our Last Minute Gift Guide. It’s holiday hope for gift-giving procrastinators.
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Make it a homeade holiday
BY JOE PAYNE
It’s not a pleasant feeling, when December rolls around and you still haven’t made a single holiday gift purchase. It’s a fear that hits you right in the gut, like too much fruitcake.
But don’t give up hope just yet, because the Sun has brought you once again the annual Last Minute Holiday Gift Guide! Among this year’s suggestions for last-minute gifts that will make you a hero to your near and dear, we offer ideas that fall into a more traditional style of giving: gifts that were crafted by hand and are truly unique.
Not everyone gets a rush from wrestling an item from the clinging fingers of marathon shoppers at big-box stores, so instead we suggest items that required some thought, care, talent, and expertise to create. These kinds of gifts—even when purchased last minute—always say a bit more about how you feel about the receiver.
From authentically simple toys to beautiful decorations, the inspiration that follows welcomes all procrastinators to consider these boutique crafts as stocking stuffers, bringing back the charm of holiday seasons gone by.
Handmade, hand played
The Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum has long held the mission of getting kids engaged in the world around them through the various play areas, creative work stations, and other attractions at the children’s museum near downtown Santa Maria. These attractions are designed not just for fun, but also to foster curiosity and creativity.
That’s why the museum was more than enthusiastic when a retired aeronautical engineer and 1948 Santa Maria High School grad named Gene West offered to donate a part of his huge collection of wooden toys, explained museum Executive Director Chris Slaughter.
“We’re a hands-on learning and educational facility, and part of that is figuring out how things work,” Slaughter said. “Technology is a very important part of our industrialized world, but when you come down to it, kids need to know how things work.”
West began crafting the wooden toys after he retired, he told the Sun, working at first from templates out of books and also crafting his own designs.
A lifelong engineer, West designed the humble toys to exhibit a certain mechanism, with some toys being much more elaborate than others. This allows the kids to learn about design, mechanics, and physics all under the umbrella of simple play.
“I like to watch the kids play with them and explore,” West said. “They find lots of different ways to make them move that I didn’t think about, but then I show them how it was designed to move, and they get so excited.”
Anyone hoping to buy some of West’s toys, or “simple automata” as he calls them, will be a bit disappointed to learn that he doesn’t actually sell the handcrafted toys.
“I’ve never sold a toy in my life,” he said. “The way I see it is, if I sell these, only a few kids get to play with them, but I give these away or display them and over 100 kids get to see the toys.”
So the only way to get one of these toys in the hands of a youngster you hope to gift to, would be to give the gift of a membership at the museum, Slaughter explained.
The toys are available for kids to play with every day, Slaughter said, which is as often as members are welcome at the learning center. The toys also receive upkeep from a member of a local wood carvers group, Slaughter said, who makes sure the toys stay intact after days of rigorous play.
“We believe in the power of play, and this is the perfect example of the power of play,” Slaughter said. “It shows what kids can learn by interacting with the toys and by taking a role in their learning experience through play.”
On a recent visit to the Santa Maria Valley Discovery Museum, 7-year-old Patterson Road Elementary School first grader Mateo Gamboa spent the better part of an hour exploring each toy, explaining how they worked, and playing with a friend he made that day, Calli Ramsey, who also enjoyed the toys.
“I like building,” Mateo said. “It’s so cool to build, and these toys look so fun.”
“When I see toys, I just always come, because I love toys,” he added. “They’re pretty much my favorite thing.”
Suds in your stocking
For those people on your gift list who aren’t overly sensitive about their personal hygiene, artisan soap makes a great gift.
At least, that’s what customers of Kyrie Denison and Tifa Brierley say. The duo sells their cute, colorful homemade soaps at CovenTree Books and Gifts in Santa Maria, and told the Sun that their customers appreciate that they use very few ingredients when crafting the small, sweetly scented bars.
“Well, we can tell people exactly what goes into our soaps,” Denison said. “So people with allergies—we can tell them every ingredient—so there’s a personal connection with the customer in that way.”
Their soaps became popular at CovenTree, especially among youngsters, explained the market’s owner Elizabeth Acosta.
Denison and Brierley like to make soaps that have small toys—like bounce balls or erasers—embedded in them, which was a big hit with both kids and their parents, Acosta said.
“Kids were racing home to use them,” Acosta said. “It’s a good way to encourage kids to take a bath; they get something fun out of it.”
The holiday season spurred several batches of themed soaps, Denison and Brierley explained while arranging the colorful bars in their display area at CovenTree.
They focused on holiday scents—including gingerbread, pine, and spruce—to pair with the familiar color scheme of the holiday season.
“We did mostly green, a lot of gold, silver, you know, classic ornament colors,” Denison said. “Red is a little harder to get into soaps, but we do have some reds in the holly berries.”
They really did think of everything, including several “soap on a rope” holiday ornaments, which adorn the tree just inside the market.
CovenTree will play host to an Arts and Crafts Boutique event—Denison and Brierley will be there—on Dec. 12 and 13. Most of the shop’s contributors of handmade items, from chainmail crafters to local authors, will attend the event, selling and showing their latest wares.
“They will have individual tables with their items set up,” Acosta said, “so you can go around and talk to them and find out what they do and how they do it.”
Following the boutique is a special soap making class with Denison and Brierley the next weekend on Dec. 19, which takes the artisan soap/holiday theme to the next level.
Attendees who pay the $15 materials fee will get to assemble a gingerbread house out of—you guessed it—soap! Every aspect of the gingerbread house, from the cookie walls to the swooping lines of icing, will be instead replaced with soap of some kind.
“We are going to have all the pieces ready for them, just like a gingerbread house, so they can start building immediately,” Denison said. “And kind of like a gingerbread house, you have to deconstruct it to use it.”
The duo offers regular soap making classes at CovenTree, but the upcoming event will focus more on making the gingerbread soap house rather than making the soap itself. Denison and Brierley both craft soaps as gifts for their friends and family each year for the holidays, they said, explaining that, once you get the hang of it, soap making isn’t terribly complex.
“It’s not something that you have to buy in a store that comes in a box,” Denison said. “It’s more accessible than most people think.”
Head to the web
More and more holiday shoppers are getting their gifts with the click of a mouse and the clack of a keyboard, but it’s a bit too late to load up an Amazon.com shopping cart, as shipping is always a problem during December.
Luckily, the vintage resale and handmade purveyor website Etsy.com is a valuable resource for shoppers who want the local touch. You can search Etsy’s Central Coast of California team, which consolidates the profiles of users from Santa Barbara to Paso Robles and everywhere in between.
For Melissa Ormonde Guzman, who runs a number of Etsy shops on her own and with her husband from their home in Santa Maria, the website allows her to share her work across several interests, she told the Sun via email.
“I guess that selling on Etsy is just kind of a natural outgrowth of my personality,” she said. “I’ve always loved creating things, and I’m really into collecting vintage.”
Guzman sells vintage patterns and sewing supplies through the shop Paper Doll Patterns; she shows and sells her handmade items in the shop Hello Camellia; and she just began Lookie Here Designs for her prints, posters, and cards.
The handmade items include pillows, banners, and handbags, which are crafted with the vintage fabrics Guzman finds and sells. Long forgotten patterns are given new life by Guzman’s flair for design, resulting in a selection of simple yet exciting decorations that bring an old-school feel to the holiday hearth.
“I’m really into vintage, and I think that comes through in pretty much everything I make,” she said. “I tend to gravitate toward bright pastels and retro-style prints that hark back to the 1950s and ’60s. I’m always on the lookout for fun vintage fabrics and materials.”
Selling on Etsy.com has also connected Guzman with numerous local artisans who also sell there. The Central Coast of California Etsy team organizes meetings and even craft fairs, she explained, and gathers for displays of various media.
Busy earning a degree in design, Guzman won’t be able to attend any craft fairs this year, but her Etsy shop is open and ready to take orders. She recommends that anyone hoping to place an order do it by Dec. 19 if they want the item before the holidays.
“I think most people appreciate a thoughtful handmade gift,” she said. “It always means a lot when you know someone has put a lot of thought and effort into making something just for you. Those are the gifts you really treasure!”
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 10-17, 2015.
