Yesterday I gave you the gift of a dog tree-topper. You’ve already assembled that and put it on your Christmas tree, right?

Well, today I’m here to help you with your gift wrapping. For the ambitious, I’ve provided a tiny, Chinese carry-out-style box. It isn’t too difficult, but requires a gentle touch in some of the folding. For those whose manual dexterity is limited to cutting a rectangle using scissors, I’ve provided gift tags to adorn those festive packages many of you will soon be wrapping. Both are in Acrobat format, which is almost certainly installed on your machine.

Download the Gift Box

Download the Christmas Tags

Cut out the box along the thin line around the edge. I’ve left some color on the outside so that you don’t get any unattractive white edges. Then, fold along the dotted lines (except the blue ones on the lid). The only tricky part is to fold the corners and paste them to the outside of the sides without a dog on them. In other words, you should see the triangular flaps on the outside of the box. The picture above will probably give you all the help you need. Oh, and on the lid, cut along the blue dotted lines so that you can slot the two pieces together.

The box is ideal for small gifts, such as the pictured candies, watch batteries, popcorn kernels or very carefully folded $100 bills. Or you may think of something equally thoughtful. Maggie may receive one filled with penny nails, screws and matching bolts. I’m sure her eyes will light with joy.

I’m guessing you can work out what to do with the gift tags.

Hooray, I have another project for you to complete! And this one is designed to go on the top of your Christmas tree. It’s also a bit easier to assemble than some of the other toys I’ve done for A Dog a Day Project. It on two pages, one for the main body and one for the halo and wings.

Download page 1, main body

Download page 2, wings and halo

Print out both sheets. Heavier paper stock will give you better results.

Cut out the main body as one piece and fold at the dotted lines and at the white tabs. Fold into shape and glue the white tabs to hold it all together.

Then cut out the halo and wings. Paste each back-to-back so that they have color on both sides. Match the letters on the halo and wings to the letters on the main body and glue in place. Then bend them out to your preferred distance (it looks better than a hard fold).

Finally, stick it on top of your tree. Contact me if you do this and would like to send me a photo, I’ll let you know where to email it. Hey, I figured out how to get my server to send email attachments from the Contact Erik page, so now you can attach a file to any message you send me and I should receive it. Hooray! Send me those tree-topper photos.

I guess this week’s Illustration Friday word is particularly good for me. I’ve done two on the theme of similar (yesterday’s weirdness was the first).

All of these dogs are similar, but only two are identical. Can you find them? I’m sure you can. In fact, I’m so sure that I’m not even going to give you an answer key on this one. Unless you give up and ask really nicely.

Today, I combined learning more about programming in Flash and the Dog a Day Project.  Have fun coloring in Dally the Dalmatian in his balloon powered basket. Just click one of the small color blocks on the right to choose a color, then click on what you want to fill with that color.

Some things, such as the basket weave, are not broken down into each individual little block. But I left the spots to color individually. If you want me to change the basket so that you can color each individual square, send me $20 or two pounds of (good) chocolate. For $10 or a pound of (good) chocolate, I’ll add more colors! Such a deal. I will now remove my tongue from my cheek.

Today, play a simple word scramble game. All of the scrambled words are breeds of dog.

Click here to play

I spent a chunk of the weekend programming this simply doggy game. Eat all the bones, but don’t eat any chocolate. It’s bad for dogs. All you have to do is use your keyboard arrows to move the little dog around.

Let’s look into the mind of Erik for a second. This started as simply a “walk the dog around” using Flash thing. You push the arrows, the dog walks in the right direction but won’t leave the screen. Then Erik thinks the dog should eat something and the bones are added. Then Erik thinks that the bones should be counted and a notification that all bones are gone should come up. Then Erik thinks that there should be something to avoid and adds the chocolate. Then Erik thinks that there should be sound effects. Then Erik wants to make sure that you can play again easily. And here is the result. A simple starting point ending in a more complex (if still simple in the grand scheme of things) game.

Below you’ll find links to four more devilish jigsaw puzzles based on Dog a Day Project pieces, each labelled with the number of pieces in the puzzle. All of these pieces are oriented correctly, no need to rotate anything. And more, you ask? If you haven’t already done them, I created puzzles from other Dog a Day Project pieces earlier in the year.

Negative Space: 56 Pieces

Ninja Dog: 80 Pieces

Deco Dog: 100 Pieces

Pub Dog: 40 Pieces

Remember those Mad Libs where you collected nouns, adjectives, verbs and such to fill in blanks and create a hilarious story? Well, I’ve created one. Since I don’t want to make big changes to this site just to include this game, you’ll need to open this little game. Hilarity is not guaranteed.

>> Click here to play the Dog a Day Project’s Dog Libs game

A simple matching puzzle with simple rules. It’s a very basic piece of programming, I can handle some basic programming features but I’ll never be a scripting whiz. Just click on a card to see what’s on the other side, then try to match it by clicking another card. Keep going until you’ve got them all. Hit the refresh button in your browser if you finish and want to play again.

It does require the latest version of Flash, so if you’re not seeing anything, go here to download the plug-in you need.

Okay, here’s how it works. All of the answers are words or phrases that include the word “dog”. But the word dog doesn’t appear in the puzzle. So if the clue’s answer is “dogleg” (and none of them are), you would enter just “leg” in the puzzle. If the puzzle mentions a number of words, then it is the number of words without the word dog… the number of words you’ll actually enter in the puzzle.

Click here to print out the puzzle without the rest of the graphics on this page.

Click here if you want the answer key. You cheater.