Hi, I'm Michael. I want to show you how to make a quick,
and easy gift for the baker in your life.
This is homemade vanilla
I actually love it and use it a lot.
It's very, very, very simple to make
We start off with a very tall slender bottle
and one vanilla bean
and you take that bean and you slit it down one side
Make sure you don't cut all the way through.
Drop it in the bottle.
So you want to make sure the bottle is high enough to hold that bean, but not too wide.
Then you just fill it up with vodka, or sherry, your choice.
But make sure you leave
Oh I would sayÉa half an inch to an inch of clear space at the top
because you want to let the air in here, so you can shake it.
It's going to be clear at first
but to get this dark color it has to set for a while
So I put it in a dark cupboard and take it out about once a week and just give it a nice little shake.
In about three months you'll have this very great caramel color
Now I know this is late for the holidays, so if you want to do something really quick...
You can cheat a little bit, take pure vanilla extract.
You can't use the imitation,
but you pour a little bit in here, just to get that color started for you.
I dress this up a little bit, just to give it a little personalization
with the label, and also the sealing wax here.
The label was really easy. I just took a piece of scrapbook paper,
or card stock, if you have it in your house.
Cut a little piece to fit it, and I took a stamp,
a lower case D in this case,
just coated it once and stamped it four times, and let it gray out.
But I also distressed it a little bit with some Tim Holtz alcohol inks.
Then I just double stick taped them on here.
For the wax, you can seal it or you can not seal it.
It's your choice, but we have this great beeswax at the store
So you just take this beeswax, cut it into little chunks
and you put it in a double boiler. Once it is melted
You just take your bottle, dip it. Let that harden a few seconds.
and you keep doing this until you get the thickness you want
Now if you don't like the color white, you can always color it.
Just take a piece of a crayon, any color will do, and drop it in there
It will color it. Just stir it, mix it up real good.
And of course, then you can give it a colored top.
You know, I like to give this a personalized gift bag as well.
So in this case, I took some felt, cut it to the size I need in here
and just stitched it up really loosely to some gloss
and add a little holiday trim to it
It makes a great little personalized, fun, gift bag.
Or if you want something a little more Christmas, or upscale,
I actually crocheted this bag and added a little tassle to it.
These are two great looks as gift bags, and really easy to do.
So I hope you make this and ejoy it as much as I do
