Our Anniversary is the only holiday we really celebrate. That said, we are extremely careful to let our friends and family know that we love, honor, and celebrate them — not out of obligation, but because we care. One way to express our love is through giving gifts or cards, and we enjoy doing just that for the people in our life.
But let us back up a bit. Soon after we made our lifetime commitment to each other, we discussed (and still do), in GREAT detail, our own personal beliefs, ideas, and opinions on every subject we could think of. One of those subjects had to do with gift giving. And, neither of us were particularly enthusiastic about the debt accumulating rituals surrounding various holidays — valentines, christmas, and birthdays, for example. So, we both agreed to pass on buying each other gifts, including Anniversary gifts.
At the same time, we recognize that holidays are important to many of our loved ones and that gift giving is a special part of that process. In general, gift giving is one way people let each other know they care. Our goal therefore became to make gifts for our friends and members of our family at least once a year.
Our goal is always to make gifts that would somehow be meaningful and/or useful to the giftee(s). This, of course, demands a huge commitment on our part. It also requires a tremendous amount of time to plan, acquire resources, and execute our creativity.
Early in our lifetime commitment, we realized our Anniversary is the perfect time to think of and create gifts for others. It seems somewhat backwards — like instead of receiving gifts on your birthday or christmas, you spend your special day making gifts for others. But, for us, it
makes our day memorable and adds to the joy of the celebration. In fact, one of our earliest gift making experiences was creating ornaments for our loved ones.
The traditional symbol of the 5th anniversary is wood, so for our 5th we created wooden ornaments.
We think they turned out fantastic (which is one of the reasons we are willing to display them publicly). Here are some ideas and techniques that helped make this project shareable:
To begin with, we found ornament blanks (pre-cut raw-wood ornaments).
Using inexpensive acrylic paints, we painted each ornament to reflect the joys or affinities of the giftee. We used various techniques to achieve special effects.
Crackle Technique:
To attain the aged appearance of the ornament shown below, we first painted the blank with a flat red color. After it dried, we applied a coat of Elmer’s wood glue.
When the glue coat became tacky (but not dried completely), we applied the white. The glue causes it to crack within about 15 minutes.
We sealed it with clear polyurethane. Finally, we added the little flowers and the gold trimming.
Two things we learned about working with the crackle finish: use a quality brush that covers a large area in one stroke, and don’t go over an area that has already been painted with the glue (it just smears; i.e., the crackle won’t “crack”).
Image Below: The gold painting on this ornament made a huge difference.
The gold and silver paint was fabulous. Not only was it appropriate for the ornamental appearance, it made our amateur painting skills look all ‘Bob Ross.’
And for many ornaments, when we applied the metallic paint, POP! Bellissima!
On the purple ornament (shown), we experimented with applying a dark green pattern. After it dried, we painted the same pattern with gold, using a smaller brush.
To get this speckled look, we applied light blue. Using a crumpled piece of paper, we dabbed on various colors–one layer at a time–allowing each layer to dry between coats.
We did something similar to the speckle 
technique for the ornament show below. The only difference is that we used a variety of application tools.
For example, we used the tip of a paintbrush handle, a plastic bag, the corner of a tea bag, etc. We just kept going over and over it until we 
achieved the desired effect.
Another thing that worked great for us was the Victorian technique of complementary colors. For example, we picked out three colors–green, purple, and lavender–to create a texture effect, and then accented with a metallic.
On this ornament (pictured below), we layered the colors to achieve depth and accented by painting the top and bottom tiers (it even made us think of a Victorian home). We made this sweet little gift for someone who loves green, purple, and dragon flies.
One of our favorite parts about making gifts is that for each gift we make, we are completely focused on the person we are making it for. We talk about all the things that make that person wonderful, unique, and special to us. We like to say it’s our way of “lovin’ on them.” We think of it as a bit of magic as well (magical thinking anyway), using the time to create a sort of blessing for them and their life. As we finished each ornament, we set it on the fireplace mantel with a label to keep track of whose was whose.
At the end of the weekend, we had two blank ornaments left. Even though we don’t celebrate christmas, we made the last two for ourselves. Can you guess which are ours? That’s right, the two red hearts below. For us, this was the beginning of our anniversary decoration tradition.
A friend gave us a three-foot, ever-living tree to put our ornaments on. But that’s a whole other blog.
We very much enjoyed, and still enjoy, making gifts for our loved ones. Pulling up these images and writing this blog has provoked the same warm and loving thoughts and feelings we experienced that special weekend, many years ago. So, our final suggestion for a successful Anniversary Gift Making experience is to take lots and lots of pictures as you go.
At any rate, we hope we have inspired you to spread the joy during your next Anniversary Season.
In Kindness,
~JnK