My last post was on wrapping presents and I mentioned that two of my friends, Bailey and Cali, had birthdays that week. When it comes to giving birthday presents, I almost always give them late. I guess it doesn't really register in my mind that I need to get a present until about two days before. However, I actually got the presents about a week earlier this time, but I ordered them off of Amazon, so I had to wait for it to get here before I could get it ready to give to Cali and Bailey. They ended up reaching my house the day of Bailey's birthday, so a little bit late. Oops! Of course, I had stuff to get done over the weekend... okay not that much. We had a volleyball tournament on Saturday and Evie and I slept and watched T.V. and movies like ALL of Sunday. I still ended up forgetting about the presents, though. I decided that I wanted to wear my "Jesus" sandals this week along with Evie and Dani, which finally pushed me to give Bailey and Cali their gifts so they could wear the sandals I got them with us!
I wrapped this present in a pretty boring way, but made a card that I spent a lot of time on, which turned out super cute.
It's always nice to get a homemade card because it really feels like the person put some thought into your gift. Sometimes, if I know my gift is pretty amazing without a card or I just don't have time, I won't include one, but if I can, I will make my own card. I like to see what I can come up with and see the person's reaction to something that's more personal. This is what I came up with.
I have a lot of scrapbook paper just sitting in my cabinet, waiting to be used. I picked out two that I thought "fit" Cali and Bailey and went to work. When you put a lot of work into something, you don't just want the person to throw it away or crinkle it up, so I wanted to make mine out of something that is stronger than paper. I settled for cardboard.
First, I cut a piece of cardboard off of a box we had in the office. I hope we weren't planning on using it!
I still didn't have much of an idea, but I knew that I wanted to cut their names out of the scrapbook paper, so I practiced the letters I was going to do. Sometimes I have bad bubble letter days where I just can't get them right, so I wanted to make sure I didn't waste good scrapbook paper by erasing a lot. I would recommend this if you are not the best at bubble letters. It was nice that their names had some of the same letters so I only had to practice once!
Once I felt like I was drawing good letters, I drew them on the pieces of scrapbook paper. If you make two or more cards like I did, draw any similar letters on one piece and leave the other one behind it. That way, you only have to cut and draw once! Draw the rest of the letters and cut them all out. I didn't cut the holes out of the middle of letters because I wanted to get creative with it. Also, I pretty bad at cutting them. :)
Make sure you erase pencil marks, so your letters are nice and pretty!
After the letters were all figured out, I mod podged the pieces of cardboard. This makes it look finished. Of course, I had to let that dry, which didn't take long, but long enough for me to get some ideas. I tried to mod podge regular white paper over the cardboard because I was too lazy to paint it white, but that didn't work at all, so I just left the cardboard the color that it normally is.
Once that dried, I glued the letters on. Mod podge in the spot you want your letter to be. Spread it out so the letters don't wrinkle. It'll look kind of messy at first, but it dries clear. Then mod podge another thin layer over the top of the letters to hold them in place and finish them off. Let it all dry before decorating.
Again, I had to think of more ideas. I ended up using the white paper to mod podge for some shape decorations and hot glueing on buttons for the letter holes. It was simple, but cute, which is always the best way to go!
I wanted to work my wrapping around the card. Since it was around the same size as the gift, I just wrapped it like you would wrap a box, but I used "tissue paper." That was in quotations because it wasn't really tissue paper, but it came in a tissue paper package and it definitely wasn't wrapping paper. I don't really know what it it, but I like it! And I didn't have to cut anything, just tape! It turned out kind of ugly because of the tape, but it was all okay because the card covered it up. I tied some ribbon in a cross around the gift to hold everything together, and then curled it. For the cross, get a long piece of ribbon and find the middle. Lay that across the top, flip the entire gift over, cross the ribbons and twist them once so they run sideways. Pull these ends up to the top again and tie it off in a knot. It helps to have someone's finger hold it in place while you tie the knot. It will be tighter and hold everything together better. If your ribbon ends are too long, cut them in half and tie them around the center on your knot. Now, instead of two pieces to curl, you have eight.
If you ask me, they were pretty good gifts and the cards made them even better. If you really want to know, though, you can ask Cali or Bailey.
Thanks for putting up with another birthday craft post! This will be the last... I hope.
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