Category: Crafts

I was somewhat joyous to see a Google magazine photo (above) of Christmas ornaments the other day. Not just ordinary Christmas ornaments, but downsized toys and scenic incrementals displayed in a lavish montage of wee ornamentals, suitable as toys but precious as a landscape of holiday décor to display.

For years now, I have been producing yuletide collectibles of larger proportions, a few eight to 10 inches tall and five or six inches wide. These are suitable for table centerpieces or displays on a desk or on a shelf.

This season, quite a few of my creations have been considerably smaller.

And with reasons.

A lot of the recipients reside in senior residences, where space is precious and minimal. A large piece takes a lot of space, so reducing the dimensions make sense.

So, I’ve been on downsize mode this season. My larger small ornamentals are 2 ½ by  2 ½  inches in size. They require smaller boxes to mail. The scenics still have holiday cheer, but tinier, and cute as hell. So it’s possible to downsize, without sacrificing.

This all becomes a factor of cost;  back in the day, it used to  be that a tiny box with pins and a modest size ornament might have cost $1.99 to $2.25. Nowadays, a comparable mailing requires anywhere from $7.99 to $9.99. Won’t reveal the estimated costs of shipping stuff, but my mailing list has mushroomed to perhaps 80 to 90 recipients, nearing 100.

Shrinking the mailing list so far is not an option; appreciate the warm responses every year. 

The season of witches and goblins looms.

Though Halloween is more than a month away, we’ve competed our project of producing lapel pins. Lots of ’em.

Which means folks on our mailing list are now beginning to receive mini-parcels of pins accentuated by images of ghouls, jack-o-lanterns, and oher icons of the bewitching season.

You’ll note, too, that the 2025 packaging is visually different — a sleeker format — with the pins snugly nestled in our usual celephane bag, without the crinkle of the past and minus a bow. This saves time, a bit of money and space. But not so much money; postal fees have spiraled; what was a $1.99 fee to mail a box of several pins a decade ago now is $6.00 (local) or $8.00 or more. The first mailing of 10 or 12 mini-boxes totaled $100. And subsequent mailings will include 80 to 85 boxes — and that’s just the postage!

Christmas, the jolliest of all seasons, could be the finale for distributing Wild Pins.

I’ve been experimenting with my Wild Cards note cards, and the newest have been a joy and fun to make.

With walking shoes as a foundation, and with multi-colored art pens and a bunch of sushi images, Shoeshi war born.. The play on words is also part of the fun.

Whimsy was my destination. And because I’m an old-fashioned sort who still sends hand-written notes to friends (vs. email) and utilizing postage stamps to support USPS, these cards hit the right notes.

And yes, who says you can’t use a Shoeshi card to say Happy Birthday?

I was able to secure a bunch of Lilo and Stitch decals a few weeks ago, just prior to the launch of the summer’s live-action blockbuster film, “Lilo & Stitch.”

The images were all over the map – dark, funny, illusional, whimsical – and I wasn’t certain how best to utilize these images as lapel pins. Each pin tells a story, but you have to create and shape the tale; the collection had attitude, if you know what I mean; Stitch and his cohorts reflect a range of emotion.

Not a Disney product, I surmised. Some pins had Japanese katakana words, perhaps embracing and reflecting anime motifs.

So, what to do?

Decided to mount each image to create a pin. But who should be the recipients?

There are slogans like “‘Ohana Means Family,” “Alien Encounter,” and “Out of This World..” Hmmm, sounded like fodder for T-shirts.

I had nearly 50 images and decided to save several for a friend with two sons, and saved a couple for myself. I wound up packageing a gift bag with the bulk of the pins, destined to the Kamehameha Schools Children’s Chorus, whose voices are heard –  lovely and reflecting pride — in Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” film. There aren’t enough pins for all the keiki, but choir director Linell Bright will find a way to distribute these pins.