Non-Traditional Golden 50th Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas

 Earlier this month, I presented you with an idea to make a handprint golden pineapple craft for a child to do. This was a craft project that my son completed to give to his grandparents as a 50th wedding anniversary gift. My husband and I wanted to be creative in what we gave to his parents for their 50th wedding anniversary and we're trying to think of a variety of things that were non-traditional but still considered golden for the golden 50th wedding anniversary.

I thought there may be some other people out there who wanted to not just give a gold frame or some other kind of gold decoration and would like to see what ideas we had.

Those ideas include Bacardi Gold rum, gold gummy bears, Gold Toe socks, a golden frame, a golden helium balloon with a card that wished them well on their golden wedding anniversary, a painting of the Golden Gate Bridge in a gold frame that my daughter made for them, gold Hershey Kisses put in a handmade Pottery dish that I made, and everything was put into a gold gift bag.

Hand Print Pineapple (Golden Anniversary Gift Idea)

My in-laws recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary earlier this year.  I wanted my kids to each be able to make them a gift on their own and this is what my kindergarten son made for them.

If you have been following my blog you understand that to my kids are pretty crafty from having me as their mom. He did most of the work for this on his own. I had him draw an oval shape on the yellow paper and cut it out then glue it onto the white paper. I made the lines with the glue and let him sprinkle on the glitter and tap it off. Then I helped him out by painting his hand green so he could press it in place for the top

I also did the glue for the word golden but he sprinkled on the gold glitter on it. He did the other writing himself to.

Square Pottery Candy Dish

I just love how this dish turned out. I had all these ideas swirling around in my head that I wanted to try and I tried several of them out on this dish that I hand built.

First off, I slab rolled out my clay. Then I used a ruler to make a square template on newspaper and then cut that out of the slabbed clay. I did not use a mold with this one. I used slip and scoured my corners to join them and then made a small coil that I put inside each edge that I smoothed in to place.

After I finished making the body of the dish, I used the tip of a fettling knife to create the detail inside. Once that was finished, I made the feet, which I did my rolling balls and flattening them on both sides, then using a sculpting too I carved out the details that make it look like bottle caps. I put those in place by souring and using slip between the feet and the dish, the smoothed edges together.

Next was the detail on the outside with the coils. I made those to help fill in and strengthen the joined edges of the dishes.

Finally, the glaze. I really wanted to see the knife detailing I did inside so there is only a clear glaze on the inside sides. On the bottom I used a sandstone glaze with clear glaze over top and on the outside I did a dark blue glaze. This piece for me was more about the details I put in the clay rather than the design of the glaze.