Fun With Presents

I got some great Christmas presents this year.

Some of them, like a pair of earrings, a coffee maker that was a joint present to Hubby Tony and me, and my silk long underwear got put into use immediately. In an effort to quickly straighten the house before the extended family came on Christmas Day, the other presents went on my dresser in the bedroom. Yesterday I returned one of them, a pair of exercise pants which were too long.  This morning it was time to take care of the rest.

After breakfast I moved a book to my bedside table, and hung the earrings on the organizer in my closet.  I washed the set of beautiful aqua-colored flannel sheets and put them on the bed. Later in the morning, I picked up a box containing a set of glass photo coasters, and got them ready to use.

Even though we have a supply of coasters already, you can never have too many places to set drinks.  These four-inch coasters came in a nice black wood holder, and had a slot to insert a small rectangular picture. I didn't have the correct size photos on hand, so I decided to cut some paper for the photo opening with another one of my presents, a portable paper cutter.

 

I've wanted a small paper cutter for years.  Unless I have a line to follow, I cannot cut straight with scissors.  The one I got is designed for scrapbooking (which I don't do), but it's compact and fits nicely in a cabinet above the desk.

For paper, I dug through the recycling drawer and a couple of old magazines.  An artistic friend taught me years ago that if you use a bit of divergent thinking when you look at things, it's amazing what you can see. For example, if you use a small portion of a larger image, the section can turn into a wonderful textural element.

Would you ever guess that the inserts in two of the coasters in the picture above came from a cable TV company advertisement, one is a picture of foundation color samples from a makeup company magazine, and one is a photo of balloons against a backdrop of trees and clouds?