For the holidays each year, I like to make at least one special homemade thing to give to family and friends. I love using this time to make a special crafty project! Last year I made wood burned spoons and now have a serious urge to wood burn every blank wood spoon I ever find... This year I decided to give vanilla extract a try. I had pinned a recipe for this well over a year ago and have been wanting to give it a try ever since. Plus, this was a fun excuse to paint up a little design for the labels.
I used this recipe and these vanilla beans for mine. I found these to be the best value vanilla beans I could find and they came vacuum sealed and super fresh! Sadly, raw vanilla beans smell kind of strong and a little gross in my opinion. I guess I expected to pop open that vacuum sealed package and have sweet sweet extract smell coming from them. I wanted to buy the IndriVanilla beans that Alexandra recommended in her recipe I used because of the raving reviews and quality/price, but they were sold out at the time I tried to order them.
The one thing that I didn't do was make these early enough. You really do need to leave plenty of time for this recipe or you're just going to end up with slightly flavored vodka... This is why I made sure when I gave them to family and friends at the holidays to put an "enjoy after" note on them.
Of course, my favorite part of this project was making the labels. Once I painted out a little design, I printed as many as I could fit on this Avery sticker paper, cut them up, and adhered them to the bottles with a little piece of beautiful Studio Carta classic twine underneath. I used these bottles, which were a fantastic deal and seriously great quality.
I loved putting together this little project. As you can see above, I used the same Studio Carta twine for wrapping the gift that I used to add the decorative element to the banner style label I created. The only thing that could have made it even nicer would have been if I had used this awesome gold tissue paper instead. Next time!
Let me know if you give Vanilla Extract a try and let me know how it goes for you! This was such a fun project for me to complete. Make sure to check back soon to see images of the soy candles I also made this year! Usually I stick to just one craft but I was really missing strictly for fun, no rules projects and decided to give both a try this time around!
-b
Full disclosure: Some of the links used above are affiliate links but all opinions are mine and affiliations were not the reason for choosing the specific products! They truly were the best deals and value.
