Michaels Christmas Crafting Haul 2015

This Christmas is going to be quite different from other years - because I'm currently unemployed, I don't have much money to spend on buying gifts for Christmas this year, so instead I'll be working to make as many gifts as possible. Last week there was a massive sale at Michaels craft store, so my mother and I got up early to hit up the store and pick up as many craft supplies as we could! Just for fun, I thought I'd show you guys pictures of everything I picked up to make various gifts, and to use for future snail mail projects as well!

The box at the bottom there is meant to be painted as a special keepsake gift. One of my few crafting talents is to paint boxes and to use Mod Podge to put cool images on top of them, like book covers or other things like that. & the mason jars with the chalk board lids will contain some sort of special treat I'm sure, like last year where I sent a few of my friends a jar of hot chocolate mix with chocolate chips and marshmallows. The  Heidi Swapp Marquee sign is a simply heart, and I'll be using paper and sparkly washi tape (and possibly paint) to decorate it and make it look pretty :)

I couldn't resist picking up some packages of Christmas and winter-themed confetti so that I can glitter bomb some people this holiday season >:) I found some holiday cards, the holiday note pad, and some baking toppers in the clearance section as well, along with the banner-shaped wooden stamps that'll be great for any occasion. Also the gold stickers will be really great to using in my Heidi Swapp Memory Planner. The scrabble tiles are really cool wooden embellishments that I picked up for 60% off, including . . .

. . . the glasses and polaroid-shaped wooden embellishments at the bottom of this picture :) These will be fun to paint and decorate. I might even glue them to a box to make something multi-textured and awesome! I spotted those super cute labels which I'll be using for various letters and packages I'll be sending out. And my favorite thing that I picked up is the Project Life pack, which I plan on using both for my own journaling as well as some cool snail mail that I want to send out!

The big letter stickers have already come in handy - I stuck a big S on an envelope that I sent out to my pen pal Shelby :) The shiny paper at the bottom is made for the Minc machine I got for my birthday, which I can run through the machine in order to cover the cool patterns with shinycoloured foil. And I couldn't resist grabbing the massive pack of clothespins. I have some ideas for some household decor that I can use these clothespins for :)

Quite the haul, eh? I'm curious to know what kinds of Christmas crafts that you guys like to make! Let me know in the comments below, and if you have any cool links to crafting tutorials, even better! Feel free to check out my Pinterest page to some of my favorite crafting and snail mail pins.