Whittle something.

Hmmmmm............. I Have sculpted before quite a while ago. Never actually whittled though.

Meet Bill. Bill the snowman. When my FL niece was about 2, she was ga-ga for snowmen, she learned about them on tv. She was up here on a visit a couple years ago and what began as a finger puppet clown, quickly got transformed into a snowman when I learned of her passion.

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Where I live there are quite a few artist. I mean STARVING artists. I went to visit one last week since I know he works with metals hoping he'd have something he made that is one of a kind and unique. WELL, he had this ONE, I don't know what you'd call it metal sculpture he did called " The Smoker". I right away was drawn to it. It was those two theatrical faces, comedy, one above the other, and tragedy, with each one having a big cigar it it's mouth. It was really cool. Kind of heavy though eventhough it was hollow since it is made of metal. I asked him how much he wanted for it. He hemmed and hawwed and really wouldn't give me a price. Then he started on the fact that he was on disability and would have to report the income and how he didn't want to lose his health benefits since he has MS. THEN he wanted me to write to our Congressmen complaining about how disabled people can't supplement their income without losing benefits. This little visit was followed by 4 phone messages on my answering machine of at least 5 minutes long EACH on how I should do this.

GEEZE man, all I wanted to do was buy ONE sculpture.

wiix, i haven't read the whole thread, just your first post...

is this someone you see "in real life"?

i ask because i posed this question in a way to my husband for you.

he said the best homemade gifts he has gotten from me and the kids were coupon books.

he loves the personal ones, like a night of total control of the remote , but the ones he always use first is for things like doing all his filing or organizing stuff for him. shredding.

i'm skimming the thread as i'm posting this.

what about making him a bunch of bookmarks with your favorite quotes? add some nice graffics?

i love them. i tend to make a note about the book and leave it in there. if i want to pass it along to a friend, i leave the bookmark. i can never have enough.

Yes, he is someone I know in real life.

Now how exactly do you make a bookmark??

is there something you could do for him, that he doesn't do for himself?

i know you want to skip the food type of stuff, but does he drink coffee?

you could make up flavored coffee's and creamers. a different type for each month of the year. same with teas. it would give you time for the flavors to mellow if you mix your own.

all you need is card stock paper. just print and cut them. you can even buy the self sticking laminate if you want.

do you have any graffics programs?

you can use clip art on a word or works document.

you don't even have to use a computer. you can write the words.

with all the scrapbooking stuff out now, you can add stickers. punch a whole at the top and add a cord.

i searched bookmark making. a bunch of free sites came up. you design them and print them yourself. free.

http://familycrafts.about.com/od/boo...t_Projects.htm

http://www.dltk-cards.com/bookmarks/