Papermancing the Holidays

The good, the bad, and the one thing I’ve got to stop doing.

Happy holidays.

I didn’t realize I’d become a meme until I watched one of my favorite YouTubers,

Sidney Morss, and saw this:

My holiday gifts consisted of:

• One macrame plant holder
• One 3d-printed tree lamp
• One miniature open-spine hardcover notebook
• Two 3d-printed yarn bowls
• No, I’m not turning this into a 12-days of anything!
• An amusingly-shaped ergonomic crochet handle
• twelve (ok, fine) handmade hardcover sticky note pads personalized with the recipients’ initial.
• And a holiday card which I created much too late to actually offer for sale, but which was so well received by those I did give it to it might spawn a whole design line:

Now that the hubbub is over, I’ve been reflecting on the experience.

Here’s the bad part of making gifts:

1. You’re in production mode. Those twelve hardcover sticky notebooks? They were supposed to be twenty. But trying to fit in making the books in between other work and social responsibilities was not fun, and I ended up feeling extra stress about it, especially if something I’d planned to do ran into any technical difficulties.
2. Impostor Syndrome.I don’t know if there are artists out there who really feel like their craft is just as good as they want it — but I’m not there yet. Even when I saw a person’s eyes light up with joy at what I’d made for them, there was a voice inside that said They don’t really like it that much. They just don’t want you to feel bad.
3. Capitalism. In Sydney’s video she makes jokes about measuring the value of a gift by how much money you spent on it -- with the Millenial character pointing out that it cost twice as much this year to make things (“Tariffs!”) and took up an entire work-week of time to make over the past few months. All of that was true for me — along with the Judeo-Xian work-ethic idea that “I’m too old to be making little books for people.” If I were a Real Adult I’d be able to buy them what they want.
4. Everything else gets incrementally more neglected the closer the holidays get. Cleaning my office, shaving, working out, physical therapy, this website, my other website, my laundry, my back yard, the dog’s walks, end of year planning and journaling…all of it got pushed aside at one point or another because I had to get things made before the date.
5. You might learn to hate your craft. AKA “burnout”, this is, I think, the biggest danger of deciding to give the gift of your own work: you grow to resent it, for all the reasons listed above, or simply out of the monotony of making one thing over and over again. This doesn’t apply to everyone, of course — my partner Natasha has been making little crocheted-leaf bookmarks, and said that even though she was making the same thing it became simply meditative and relaxing.

Here’s what was good about it:

1. Leveling up my skillset. By putting this pressure on myself and making multiple versions of the same craft, I got better at that particular skill, whether it was using a new kind of filament in The Bodgery’s 3d printers or just cutting the book cloth for the sticky note books.
2. I learned what tools mattered, and what tools didn’t. For any particular hobby there’s a lot of choices available for people to use, and there’s nothing like time pressure to filter out the useful from the decorative. I know what kind of bone folders work best, I’ve been through about four different types of glue before swearing allegiance to the UHU stick, and I’ve found exactly the right size of cigar box to fit my gear into.
3. It became easier to say no to marketing. Not always — that fancy glass cutting mat and finger-blade in the picture below are recent acquisitions. But when we went to the Big Gay Market here in Madison, walking past stickers and notebooks and 3d-printed knickknacks and candles and soap and t-shirts and such pretty much always brought on the Maker’s Refrain: Oh, I could make that.* This meant that I could focus what money I did spend there more deliberately, such as buying one of Josie’s Cubes for my niece (because I can’t make those) or enjoying the delightful “mystery pack” of stickers that I got from my favorite sticker vendor.
4. I got better at making what I needed to make things. I lost my bone folder; I didn’t have time or money to buy a new one; I went to The Bodgery and 3d printed one. Likewise, while the guy who teaches how to make the hardcover books offers a free PDF template, it was easier to take the time to 3-d print one**.
5. It did feel good. While I noted the “impostor syndrome” above, there was also a visceral pleasure in giving people things I’d made with my own hands, that held the memory of the time I’d spent on them. That was time with the people (at least in your head) and if they do use their gifts, it will be time spent with me, as well.

But there’s one giant mistake I need to stop doing.

I’m not a big believer in “resolutions” but there is one thing in particular that I really, really, really want to never do again. Think of it as my own personal Crafting Commandment:

Thou shalt not make a craft for the first time with the intention of it being a gift.

I understand why I feel that way; more often than not I will see some kind of craft and decide to take it up because I think Oh, hey, I know just the person who would like that!

There’s deeper aspects of ADHD and people pleasing wrapped up in that, but that’s a different site. But the problem is that since I feel a lot of time scarcity, I don’t take the time to make a few shitty pieces — I just seem to expect that my first attempt will be exactly the quality that I want to give.

It rarely is.

And that, more than anything else, can sap the joy of giving a gift that you made.

I’m still going to keep making gifts — but I’ve got an entirely different gift-giving strategy for 2026, which I’ll go into in another post.

Meanwhile — did you make anything for people for the holidays? How did it go? How did it feel? If you’d like to join us on Saturday at 3pm CST to do some Papermancy Live and talk about it, drop me a line and I’ll make sure you get an invite!

* Please note that this refrain is not necessarily true, but it still serves as a good buffer against instant purchases.

** I feel a little bad about this, because I could have bought one that he 3d prints and sells on Etsy, but I didn’t have time to wait for shipping. I plan to make up for it by buying something from him in the future.