Making a fun LEGO minifigure holiday card

This post brought to you by LEGO. All opinions are 100% mine.
LEGO has this fun part of their site called LEGO Minifigure Family where you can create minifigure versions of you and your family to use as a holiday card.

It's really easy to use. You get to add people and pets one by one, and customize them. Starting by picking out skin tone, then faces- which includes several expressions and some of them have glasses. Next step is hair or hat style. After that, click on torso to pick a shirt, then legs to pick pants. Or if you want play a bit- you can randomize the outfit.
It was a lot of fun picking the outfits, faces etc that best reflect my family. My husband does wear sweater vests, our daughter does wear suits. I'm kind of a hippie so the finge and tie dye work out well for me. My dad dresses plainly, but likes to wear caps and does have a full face of hair. It was so easy to pick the outfits for each one.
It's all very easy to use and after your done you have the option of sharing the finished image, or downloading it.
Minifigures are so nifty, and creating your family in minifigures makes for a memorable, fun greeting. Go try it out!
LEGO Minifigure Family

Book Review- Snowflakes, Sunbursts and Stars

Snowflakes, Sunbursts and Stars- 75 Exquisite Paper Designs to Fold, Cut and Curl is one of those books that just excites me down the core of my paper crafting soul.

The reason is because it's kirigami (cut paper designs), origami (folded paper designs) and quilling (coiled paper designs) to create all sorts of gorgeous mandala like designs that can be used for home decoration, on cards or made tiny, as jewelry.

It's a nicely made hardcover book, with tons of projects. Beautifully photographed double page spreads in the beginning show you all the projects. Then the introduction covers tools, techniques and paper types- so if your a complete novice to any of the techniques, you can start just with this book. The introduction covers basics of paper quilling, how to read origami diagrams and how to follow the kirigami instructions.

Each technique is in it's own section, and the projects are all marked by shape- sunbursts, stars or snowflakes.

First is the quilling- these are gorgeous, lacy designs that are diagrammed very well to show how to glue together the components to create filigree shapes. The technique is wonderful and finished pieces are good for jewelry and ornaments.

Origami explains how to make different shapes to work with, starting with cutting a square from a rectangle of paper, then making other shapes. It also shows how the same basic base will look completely different according to the number of sides your base shape has. The bases by themselves are attractive, but then it gets into the projects which develop on those bases for intricate models. Some of those have a lot of folds and are a little bit challenging for me- I'm an experienced paper folder but not an expert.

Kirigami is my favorite section. It explains how to fold the paper to cut 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 sided shapes then shows a bunch of gorgeous snowflakes, stars and sunbursts to cut. There is something so satisfying about opening out a square of folded, cut paper to see the delicate snowflake appear.

I absolutely recommend this book- it's one of my favorite books of 2013!

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I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

Sunny Christmas Coloring Page

Remember when I posted the Sunny Christmas printable box? This is especially good for people in places that just don't get snow at all for Christmas and was inspired by a lady in Australia.

Here's a coloring page for you all. I hope you enjoy it!
Click on the images for larger versions to print and color.

Small JPG version:

Large transparent PNG:

Sunny Santa Mandala

When I posted this sunny Santa the other day, I said I'd be doing a coloring page soon. Actually, I'm doing 2. The one I'll post tomorrow will be a lot like the one above. The page today is a simplified version as a mandala. I hope you like it.

I'm pretty envious right now of people who are in warm places for Christmas. It's snowy and gorgeous here, but bitter cold. Click on the images below for a larger version to print and color.

Small JPG version:

Large transparent PNG version: