My Happy Place

There are those who would say giving a gift card demonstrates thoughtlessness. Personally, I enjoy receiving gift cards. However, I do understand where our anti-gift card friends are coming from. Gift cards can lack that personal touch. Therefore, I thought I would suggest three ways that you can get crafty and dress up gift cards, adding a unique flare that is sure to impress your recipient.

1. Make a greeting card. With all of the nifty new tools specifically designed for paper crafting, creating a one-of-a-kind card has never been easier. Slipping your gift card into a hand-crafted greeting card amounts to a relatively small amount of muscle needed for big impact potential.

2. Fabricate a gift card wallet. People that receive a lot of gift cards, or like saving their cards (like I do), will probably need a place to keep them all safe and organized. Plus, in the event that you lose your daily wallet, you don’t want to lose all of your gift cards along with it (I’ve seen it happen), so a wallet designed exclusively for gift cards is a great idea. For my mother’s most recent birthday I created an Emergency Gift Card Pouch (to be used in case of shopping emergencies, of course) and included a couple of gift cards to her favorite stores inside.

3. Get wacky! For you über-creative people, gift card pockets can be added to just about anything. Glue them on, sew them on—endless possibilities! When celebrating a coworker’s kidney-themed birthday (yes, a birthday themed around a vital organ) last year, I gave him a custom kidney plushy (based on the I Heart Guts! kidney) complete with a stuffed gift card pocket on the backside.

From the simple to the strange, I hope that I have succeeded in demonstrating that gift cards can indeed be dressed to impress. With a little bit of elbow grease and a healthy dose of imagination, you too can endow a mass-produced piece of plastic with a dazzling personality.

How is a necklace related to a sewing basket? Answer: It’s not. Enter the almighty Theme! Theme. Theme, theme, theme. I even like saying the word, “theme.” (Alright, enough with the IT Crowd references.) I am a total theme freak. It is the theme that unifies all the elements of your gift. And, theming your gift around your recipient’s interests can make the gift highly personal and significant.

There are three ways to work with a theme. The first is to choose a theme before making your gift, and then create your gift according to the theme chosen. For example, if your recipient loves dogs, you could embroider a puppy onto a pillow, paint a picture of a dog, design a pair of paw print earrings, etc.

The second method is to fabricate/purchase the gift, determine the theme according to the gift item(s), and then package/embellish the gift in keeping with the theme. I used this approach recently when giving a girlfriend a book about women and travel. In the spirit of travel, I used a map of locations that my friend has visited to wrap the book (keeping the entire map intact, I might add). A word of warning: it may be difficult to establish a theme for gifts comprised of several different items.

The third technique is a combination of the previous two. In preparation for my “roomie’s” bridal shower, I made it my mission to create something extra special to let her know just how much I love her. My magnificently crafty aunt had previously taught me how to make necklaces with glass and silver solder, so I decided to fashion a necklace with her married initials, “A” and “R.” Settling upon using her initials as my theme, I embossed the letter “A” in silver on a small box in which I placed her necklace. Finally, having discovered a gorgeous sewing basket, I placed the jewelry box into a niche in the sewing basket, and tied everything together with a large, silver-glittered letter “A” secured to the sewing basket handle.

By creating a piece and accenting the purchased elements within a theme, everything came together in one harmonious composition, which I hope portrayed lots of thought and love (which is really what gift-giving is all about, themed or not).

So, next time you get ready to plan a present, I hope you find one of the three listed processes to be helpful. May the Theme be with you!

P.S. I’ve made it easier to leave comments on my site. I’d love to hear back from you on ways you’ve themed your gifts!

I love giving gifts! It’s a challenging but enjoyable enterprise to find gifts that will be in some way significant to the recipient. I do admit that most often, mainly due to time constraints, it is much easier to purchase prefabricated items. In this individualization-loving, consumer world there are frequently numerous gift options that you simply can’t believe weren’t designed exclusively for your recipient.

However, there are times that even after extensive searching, nothing seems to fit the bill. So, do I settle? No! Give up? Never! My motto: When the giving gets tough, get crafty! Ditch prefab, and create something fabulous! Crafty giving is all about personalization. What floats your recipient’s boat? Do they have a hobby? What is their favorite color? From small touches to all-out, one-of-a-kind creations, the possibilities are endless.

Over the next few entries, it will be my goal to furnish you with some tips and ideas for creating gifts exactly suited to your recipient. I’m no Martha Stewart. As much as I admire her ability to consistently produce a hyperperfect outcome to everything she touches, I’m much more practical and (dare I say it?) thrifty. Nevertheless, there are some underlying principles to crafty giving that permeate all praiseworthy do-it-yourself gifts, no matter how simple or grandiose. So, whether you’re a Stewart disciple or not, I’m hoping there will be something for everyone.

Here is a sneak peek at the next installment:

I have a penchant for the odd and quasi-creepy. I am definitely a classic monster kind of gal. Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Godzilla, the Creature from the Black Lagoon — I love them all! However, while I do enjoy a tinge of creepy, even the fuzzy Wolf Man can’t really be described as “cute.” So, how does one pay tribute to these ghouls without being overly gloomy?

Lucky for me, in the world of crafting almost everything can be cutified. I’ve been getting a charge out of incorporating monsters into my craft projects. One such project was giving life to the simple cell phone socks that my sister scored at her local dollar store. As soon as she showed them to me, we both knew I had a project of monstrous proportions ahead of me. Here is the result (as captured by my incredibly talented sister):

Recommended reading: Have an affinity for monsters? Got mad crocheting skills? Do I have a book for you! Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More! by Christen Haden is crawling with friendly little fiends. As the review on Amazon says, “the dolls in Creepy Cute Crochet eat your typical amigurumi for breakfast.”

Today is National Grammar Day! In a world where the lowercase letter “i” is a perfectly acceptable substitute for the pronoun (in most forms of casual written communication), the fight to maintain good grammar is very near and dear to my heart. If a well-crafted sentence warms the cockles of your heart, you can join SPOGG (The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar) and print your own SPOGG Membership Card.

Happy National Grammar Day!