Secret Message Gift card

 

Make a card with hidden compartment to hide some money or a message

This cool little card is all made from one die and provides a little pull out tab that you can write a message on, or in my case, I folded a piece of paper money as a gift and hid it in this part.

The bonus of making your own cards, is you can use scraps of decorative papers, old wrapping paper and orientate it to the particular occaision.  I've made this one into a birthday gift but it would be equally cool as a Christmas gift card.

Follow the below link to find out how the card was made

Box of Flowers

 

Use Lawn Fawn's Scalloped Box Card Pop-up Die to create this box of flowers

Create this box of flowers for decoration around the home or it folds flat so you can post it as a greeting card.

Use any flower dies you have and any coloured card to create a unique gift or greeting card for your recipient. 

 

This would make a lovely new home gift or card and also a thank you note. 

I have made one of these type of cards in my blog before - using cat stamps. If you missed it you can click here to open the blog page.  When you get the hang of gluing the box pieces together - you can decorate it however you wish.

 

Follow the below link to find out how the card/gift was made

Letter Holder

 

Make a letter rack to hold your incoming or outgoing post or your greeting cards

This week I'll show you how to make this cute letter holder from scrapbooking card.

I've made mine to fit A5 envelopes but I will show you how to adjust the size if you wish to make a smaller holder.

It can be used as a rack by your door to remind you to post your greeting cards or maybe just to hold the greeting cards you have made. I've also made a couple to hold advent calendars (I know it's a bit early to be talking about these, but scroll to the bottom of the blog page where I will show you why and what I have done to make a festive calendar).

It might be nice to make one of these as a gift for a friend and fill it with greeting cards that they can post. Or why not make one to hold your favourite recipes?

Follow the below link to find out how the letter holder was made

Lollipop flowers

 

Use Lawn Fawn's Reveal Wheel flower add on dies to make these cute little lollipop gifts

With Easter coming up, I thought these would make lovely little gifts. You can easily make a few to create a flowerpot of flowers.

I bought a packet of lollipops from my local cheap store. I've made two types of flowers, one on round lollipops and another sort on flat lollipops.  I'll show you how to make the basic lollipop flowers below and then you can decorate them to your hearts content.

Follow the below link to find out how the flowers were made

Tea Cup Gift Holder

 

Use some pretty decorative card to make a holder for a tea cup gift package

This week I thought I'd make a wrapper so you can gift a tea cup filled with homemade biscuits and a few individually wrapped tea bags. It makes a brilliant little gift for someone feeling under the weather, having a bad time at the moment or just needs a little gift to say hello. :)

You can buy some really pretty and fairly inexpensive cups and you can fill it with hot chocolate sachets, sweets or whatever your friend may like.

Follow the below link to find out how the wrapper was made:

Money Box

 

Create a money box from card and decorate to inspire saving for your goals

As it's the start of a new year, we often make resolutions or our thoughts just turn to having a great year. So why not make a money box to save for a particular event or occasion or maybe just for a rainy day? You could give the money box away as a gift with a few coins in to start the recipient off on their savings for something particular.

I've made mine to remind me of the summer and my love of going to the beach, having ice creams and cups of tea. I'm going to save my odd pennies for trips to the beach :)

I've used the Bakers Box Thinlits die set by Stampin Up as it can be tied at the top so you can get your coins out just by un-tying the ribbon. However if you have a different type of box die such as a milk carton, I am sure you can adjust it in a similar way to create your money box. Like all my blog pages, I am hopping this will inspire you to use what you have. I have made a window in the back of the money box (by cutting out a rectangle and covering it with acetate) so you can see your collection growing, however you can ignore this and just have a solid money box if you would prefer.

The bakers box die doesn't make a tall enough box for what I needed.  So I will show you how to cut the top and bottom of the die and therefore making the middle section bigger.    

I've made mine out of patterned paper and then went on to decorate it further. You could make yours out of plain card and then embellish it. It can be adapted for so many occasions such as saving for a car, Christmas, rainy day or maybe as a gift for a new born child.

Follow the below link to find out how the money box was made

Parcel Bow

 

Make a beautiful paper bow to decorate your gift

I love decorating my gift parcels, so this week I thought I'd try and make a bow.

I've made this bow out of a piece of A4 printer paper that I printed some Christmas patterns onto, but you could use some wrapping paper - just as long as it's not too thick. If it was too thick, the paper wouldn't curl as well. This particular print was part of a digital scrapbooking kit I purchased from Nitwit Collections - click here to be taken to the website.

I've used Tombow multi liquid glue to hold the bow together. It's my favourite glue as it sticks almost anything together. You could use staples, hot glue gun or double sided tape. It needs to be a really strong glue to ensure your bow does not uncurl!

Follow the below link to find out how the bow was made

Decorative photoframe

 

Make a decorative photoframe as a gift or just to decorate your home if you have a favourite photograph

This is a really simple gift to make and you can use whatever you have in your craft stash to decorate the frame. I have made a Christmas photoframe for a photo of my dog to decorate the living room. At this time of year in the UK, we often have our children's school photo's that we give to relatives - how nice would it be to decorate the frame as well?

I've just used a little bit of coloured card, a few dies and some random buttons I had in my stash. Below I'll show you lots of ideas that you could do to make a Christmas photo frame. It doesn't have to be a Christmas photo frame - you could use flowers, leaves, balloons, stars or any other stamps or images you have.

I have used a cheap photo frame - it really doesn't need to cost much and you could even slightly sand it and paint it before adding your decorations. The great thing with this gift, is you can play around with the decorations and keep changing your mind until you are happy with the composition. Once happy, then just glue everything down.  

Follow the below link to find out how the frame was made

Hanging ornament

 

Change a photo or favourite image into a hanging ornament that you can even add to a greeting card

I have some nice photo's that I thought would be lovely to turn into a hanging ornaments. You can either hang them around your house or send them as or in cards.

This is a photo of my puppy when she was really young, chewing a stick in our garden!

I'll show you how to turn a photo into a hanging ornament but you could use any image as long as it's the right size. I do cross-stitch aswell and this can be turned into a hanging ornament using the same process but use felt for the frame and backing and instead of gluing the layers together - sew them (Felt does seem to cut nicely with dies).  There's a photo of one I have done at the bottom of this blog.

The ornaments are made using nesting dies. I use circular ones but you can use any shape nesting dies. You can also adjust the size if you would like a smaller or larger ornament by using different size dies. I use a digital photo, so I will also show you how you can adjust the size before printing it to fit your ornament.

Also, if you wish your photo ornament to last - use acid free card to mount your photo as this will help it stop turning yellow.   Scrapbooking card should be ideal as this has been made especially to protect your photo's.

Follow the below link to find out how the ornament was made

Hello Spring Tic Tacs

 

Make a lovely little spring gift by making a spring cover for a pack of tic tac's

On a recent walk, my son finished off some tic tac's from a snowman decorated box I made previously (Click here to see that blog). Anyway, he suggested I made one for Easter. I am up for a challenge so here is this weeks blog.

It was a little tricky to come up with a design where I could cut out part of the picture so the tic tacs could be seen through. I am pleased with the result and so was my son :)

My image of a bunny rabbit sitting in a pot came from Lili of the Valley. In the 'You will need' section below it shows you where you can purchase this from. However you may already have a stamp with a similar image you could use instead. The main reason for my blog this week is to show you how you can adjust the size of a computer image to print it for a project. I normally use publisher to do my picture adjustments but I know not everyone has access to this program, so I show you how to do the adjustments in Inkscape, a free package that you can download.

Follow the below link to find out how the gift was made

Jam Jar of Flowers

 

Make an everlasting bouquet of flowers for mum for mothers day

I love making things from paper and card - not just greeting cards, so this week I was very excited when I made this everlasting jar of flowers. I used Stampin Up's 'Jar of Love' stamp and die set.

It doesn't have to be a mothers day gift, with different coloured flowers it could be table decorations for a wedding. It can be folded flat so can also be posted making it a great birthday gift too.

Follow the below link to find out how the card was made

Halloween Bat Box

 

Make these fab bat pillow gift boxes out of just black and white card

It will soon be Halloween so this week I show you how to make these cute bat gift boxes. They are made from an A4 sheet of black card and a small amount of white card. You can then fill them with sweets and gift them.

I will attach a link so you can download a template in order to cut out your bat shapes by hand. However if you have a silhouette machine, send me a message via my contact me page (here) and I will email you a file that your machine can cut out.

I made a lot of these for my work colleagues and filled them with Hero chocolates. I can't imagine the chocolates lasted long but they said the boxes were so cute that they would bring them out again next year and refill them!

Follow the below link to find out how the box was made

Folded bookmark

 

Turn a folded bookmark into a little gift for someone in your life

My children have made these in school before - ones with big googly eyes and jagged teeth making them look like monsters! I love making little gifts for people and these are great bookmarks to make and could be made to go with a gift voucher or book gift or on their own if you are sending just a card. I've made some with just patterned paper and some I have then decorated up to look like animals.

I have used an old stamp set from Stampin up called Playful Pals as they were designed to go with triangular boxes - absolutely perfect for this project. However if you don't have this set you could just draw features for your bookmarks or use other stamp sets you have. I have also done some with googly eyes - particularly the penguin as my son loves penguins and googly eyes!

They can be made with a piece of 6 x 6 paper or card which means if you have any favourite papers that you do not want to use or give away - just make yourself a quick bookmark to mark the pages of your favourite craft book or magazine.

Follow the below link to find out how the bookmark was made

Envelope Book

 

Make a book from envelopes that can hold your keepsakes or favourite memories

By making a book from envelopes you create pages of little pockets. These pocket books can be used for memories, recipes, collectors cards or even tokens and vouchers. You can use pre-made envelopes or make your own. The size of your book depends on the size of your envelope and how many envelopes you use.

I saw one of these many years ago and have been keen to make one since. I wanted to make a holiday book as I keep all my tickets and leaflets etc from each day that I am on holiday so when I get home I can turn them into a scrapbook. So this is my attempt at an envelope book. I will talk you through how to make my holiday memories envelope book using the pre-bought envelopes, but will give you instructions on how to adjust the sizes depending on your own size envelopes. I will then show you how I made a Christmas book out of envelopes I have made using my WeR Memory Keepers envelope punch board.

Follow the below link to find out how the book was made 

Writing paper

Send a friend a hand written letter on your own created gorgeous paper

I had a friend write to me recently - I haven't had a letter through the post for some time. I am determined to write back but my paper is just the plain white stuff that you can buy. I therefore decided to make my paper more interesting by using stamps from my stash.

So yay - I now have some lovely paper to write back to my friend on. You could make the paper with the same image on each page or even use die cuts instead of stamps. When I write my letter and have gaps in my writing I will probably fill the spaces with either more stamps or die cuts or even peel offs. It's a great way to use those stamps you love.

You may want to make a letter and envelope set to give as a gift. You could theme the letters and envelopes so they all match. I show you how to make a basic wallet to store them in at the end of the blog.

Follow the below link to find out how the stationery was made

Exploding Chocolate Gift Box

This is a fun gift to make that I am sure will delight many

I am very excited about this make - goodness knows how the chocolate bars made it into the gift without me eating them all first! Valentines is now over so my attention is turning to Easter. I was browsing the internet and found an exploding chocolate gift box for sale - it was rather pricey so wondered if I could make my own - turns out I can. I found a few online instruction videos but struggled to find somewhere that gave me the sizes - not only that I wanted to make it with items I have in my crafting supplies, rather than purchasing larger sheets of card.

So here are my instructions for making an Exploding Chocolate Gift Box. It uses double sided 12 x 12 scrapbooking card so you can adjust it to suit any occasion. You could put wrapped biscuits and teabags or even slip a gift card into the gift. The chocolate bars can't be any bigger than about 9cm in length - the ones I have picked for this gift are the multi-pack bars such as Cadbury Dairy Milk 29.3g x 9 bars.

Follow the below link to find out how the card was made

Noughts and Crosses

Or Tic-Tac-Toe - create a game that can be used in a restaurant to entertain your little ones or send to a child (small or big) in a birthday card

I've been wanting to make a portable noughts and crosses game for a while. My children and I often play this if we are waiting somewhere - for example waiting in a restaurant but we don't always have enough spare paper with us (plus think of the trees). This one is small enough to keep in my handbag for any such occasion. I even made an envelope for it using We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board to keep all the pieces together.  (Click here to see how an envelope is made).  However an envelope that would fit a 5" square card would work just as well.

You could make and post it like a little gift within a birthday card.

My favourite is the little stamped pieces but if you scroll down to the end of the instructions you can see my son and I have been playing it with die cut pieces (for those who don't like stamping) or buttons (great for anyone with dexterity issues).

Follow the below link to find out how this little game was made

Post-it note holder with calendar

Make a lovely gift of post-it note holder with pencil - with or without a calendar

I wanted to make some new year gifts for my friends using the small calendar tabs that you used to use when you were a child on your school art work. This gift is based on an easel style card and I decided to add post-it notes and a pencil so it can be placed on a desk or next to a phone - ready to take important messages.

As I've already missed the beginning of the year (I'm always working on things last minute!) I've also made the same gift without the calendar to show you it doesn't have to include that bit if you wish to make them later in the year.

Follow the below link to find out how the gift was made

Tic Tac Holder

Make tic tacs into a really cute small gift

I made these tic tac holders a couple of years back and gave them away as Christmas gifts. However I don't think they have to be just Christmas gifts so I am writing some instructions so you can make them too. You can buy packs of 4 tic tacs quite cheaply and you only need small amounts of card - they would make lovely January gifts to cheer up friends.

I used a Stampin Up stamp set of a snowman to make the picture on the front but you can use any snowman stamp you have.

Follow the below link to find out how the gift was made