Easy New Gift Project

Well I have been taking so many photographs that I needed a book for myself to keep a record of the small print outs and to doodle and make notes and perhaps compliment the images with scrapbooking paper, ribbons, and other embellishments, basically to inspire myself and have something to reflect on.

You could just as easily make this book for any other purpose, family photos, a mini scrapbook, a gratitude journal, or a friendship book.

I had a black spiral bound visual arts journal and covered the back inside and outside in one go with the pink floral paper you see above, and then on the front cover used a small segment of the same paper and topped it with the stripes, trimmed with gold metallic ribbon, and a transfer that reads "inspiration and genius, one and the same", and a small bird house tranfser.

The inside front cover is the hot pink with the words you see 'Dream, Seek, Find, Love, Live' and other small embellishments.

So you see making a personal album or journal for your loved ones is not a long job (mine took half an hour) and is very economic as gifts go, especially if you have fabric, paper, and ribbon remnants on hand.

All Buttoned Up

After the button tshirts, I still had a lot of buttons left over, so I bought a chipboard tissue box cover from Spotlight ($3.95), and painted it with a pot of lavender accrylic paint I had on hand.

Once it was well and truly dried I began by pouring my buttons into two shallow dishes so that I could select buttons, one at a time, and attach them with stainless adhesive glue.

I did one side at a time, allowing the glue to fully set before turning the box over to begin the next side.

I find it is a good idea to keep a slightly damp sponge at hand to wipe any wet strings of glue before they set on your project.

I think this would be a lovely gift for a little girl's bedroom, and something your children could easily do for a friend's gift (providing your children can be trusted not to choke on the buttons of course).

Making my box was so soothing, and I completed it just in time before I caught this awful cold, and of course I am seeing a lot of the tissue box, we may run away together in fact. If I get the energy.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever, it's loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness", John Keats