I decided to be a little bit more ambitious this christmas and use my crochet skills to make some gifts for my friends and family. after avoiding magic circles for years, I finally figured out how to crochet a granny square and that opened up the possibility of dipping into the world of amigurumi and all the amazing tutorials online.
since blind boxes have been all the rage alongside cute bag charms, I combined those two ideas to create a winter bear-kery series featuring some classic winter cookie flavors as well as my favorite cafe drinks. I used the cookie bear tutorial from chubbiesbyash which was really detailed and easy to follow and such a pleasant surprise that my first bear didn’t come out completely misshapen.
using a picture of my prototype/trial bear, I traced the outline on procreate and printed it out on sticker paper. it was so satisfying to see all the bears get colored in even if my hand was lowkey dying by the end of it. I haven’t done any coloring in years so this was really relaxing and I found myself enjoying the repetitive action of coloring each bear “type.”
I have watched so many small business packing videos and was super excited to brainstorm the box design. my original idea included more of a printed design for both the front and back which in hindsight might have been a bit quicker and less coloring but I couldn’t figure out the correct dimensions since it’s more of a trapezoid shape than a straight up rectangle. the final illustrated front designs were done with a tombow 977 and outlined with a white gelly roll (which just a tangent, I have such a love/hate relationship with this pen because it’s so nice when it works but also constantly skips). also attempted to draw some baguettes and a cookie jar - the key word is attempt because my baguettes came out so wonky.
the most tedious part was cutting out each sticker but I’d say cutting quickly is one of my learned teacher superpowers so it wasn’t that bad. the sticker paper I bought didn’t stick too well on the cardboard box material so I ended up having to strengthen them with some glue but in total we have six different bears: peppermint (secret), snickerdoodle, brownie, espresso, strawberry, and matcha.
it’s been really fun seeing all my friend open their blind boxes and so far I did a pretty good job guessing which ones they would like so they would get the rush of excitement of pulling their top choice (only miscalculated one friend but he was still happy with his pull cause it matched his normal color scheme). not sure if I would necessarily do this again next year because it took me a good month to crochet all the bears and a whole day of prep/packaging.
however, the whole experience did make me look forward to the holidays a little more than usual. maybe it’s because I spent all the time preparing the gifts so it felt like I got into the holiday spirit earlier or because I had the self-satisfaction of making the gifts instead of buying them so there wasn’t the same shopping anxiety that usually accompanies the first few weeks of december.
either way, I’m bottling up that sense of calm and happiness and keeping it safe for 2026.
