Thaumatrope Christmas Giftys!

Phew! After tons of popcorn, popped and coated with caramel then shoved into lil' baggies, I'm officially done with Christmas! The eve of the great holiday we've all been building up to is tomorrow so I thought I'd share what I sent my pen pals and made my sisters for Christmas. Every year I try to make at least one lil' thing that is hand made and unique! This year I chose Thaumatropes! Now, you've probably never heard of it, but I can guarantee that you've seen one before. You can read about it HERE! But I'll give you the short version...basically it uses the persistance of vision to put the two images together when you spin them! Still not sounding familiar? Remember the bird and cage spinny thing from Sleepy Hallow? Ahh, see I told you, you've see one before! Now for giftys I made my own! They are surprisingly easy! I think I might have to get into the habit of sending of of these to all my new pen pals!   

 

Insta-beard!

 

Foxy Lil'Mask!

 

Camp-fire yah!

 

Mysterious Mustache!

 

Bug-hunting!

My illustrations aren't anything too terribly special, but I think they turned out pretty well! I was gonna try and do a video of them so you could see what they look like when spinning. But alas I ran out of time! Never enough time when it comes to christmas! I love that these are flat so they are easy to tuck into envelopes for pen pals! 

 

 

One of my pen pals sent me these lil photos of random girls. So I used them to make some Thaumatropes! In the end you have to get it to spin really fast to get it to merge together successfully. But its kinda neat! I thought it could be fun to do them with photos of your family and friends! Wouldn't that be awesome to get a personalized on of these in a birthday card?! Oh, I'm getting so excited by this idea and the endless possibilities! 

Ok ok, now I'm done nerd-ing out over my new victorian paper toy! Do you make handmade giftys? Anything special this year?