Tagged by Cricut!

The typical Chanukah version of the "Ugly Christmas Sweater" includes a chanukiah (9-branched menorah), a Star of David, and/or a dreidel (4-sided top with Hebrew letters on each side). It is some combination of a near royal blue and white, echoing the colors of the Israeli flag (which in turn, echo the colors of a traditional tallith or prayer shawl, which themselves echo the Biblical command to wear a garment with fringes, and in each corner, a thread of a particular shade of blue — Num. XV:37-41). Gold, silver, or their equivalent tones of yellow and gray, may be added for contrast.

Let's just say I'm not typical. (Would a typical person wish you a "Boo Christmas"?)

While the game of dreidel is quite simple, it seems difficult to explain to someone for the first time. This is particularly true because the letters on the dreidel are generally written in Hebrew "print", and to a non-Hebrew reader, the nun (נ) can look very similar to the gimmel (ג). I decided to have some fun and print up a T-shirt with an irreverent set of instructions, and presented in the manner of Wiley Publishing's "For Dummies" series of books and e-books. I licensed a couple of dreidel images from Cricut (#M3BA72 and #M87F31EA), and because I didn't have the same typefaces as Wiley uses for their series (and hey, I didn't want to copy their cover page design exactly because that would be copyright infringement!), I used dafont's Kanisah Regular (for the word "Dreidel") and the installed version of Papyrus ("for Dummies") on the back, Google Fonts' Alegreya Sans Italic for the title on the front, and Arial Bold for the instructions themselves.

It was a fun project and basic enough to "share" on Design Space. Little did I know that Provo Crafts' blog authors thought it worthy of highlighting!

I was looking for Judaic-themed shirts recently, just to see what was around and get some ideas for what sells at what price points, and one of the links Google found was my "Dreidel for Dummies" in Cricut's "Holiday T-Shirt" blog.

I wish I'd found out about it earlier, but hey! Thanks, Cricut!