Handmade Birthday Gifts

EA and MC were invited to a friend’s birthday party last week. The mom requested small gifts only, and I immediately knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I’ve done something similar for other birthday parties we’ve gone to and it’s always a big hit!

Birthdays and other holidays are the perfect time to try out some hybrid scrapbooking. That is a combination of digital and paper scrapbooking. I always prefer to do most of my work digitally but adding some extra real elements really makes things stand out.

My first tip for gifts is to make the packaging look as cute as possible. This can be done with hand made “stuff” or by using a cute gift bag with coordinating tissue paper.

For this gift, I purchased several school supply items (notebook, pack of erasers and package of pencils) and then I used digital scrapbooking to make personalized labels for everything. I ran the labels through my Xyron machine and voila…we were set!

The notebook was a regular composition notebook that I used digital scrapbooking to alter and personalize. I attached ribbon to the edge to make it stand out just a little bit more.

Another wonderful gift idea for a girl is a scrabble tile pendant. These are so much fun to make! If you would like to give it a try, here’s a tutorial I wrote last year. I have several pre-made and pretty much ready to go. You can even try to match the birthday girl’s initials with the letter on the scrabble tile.

And to finish it off, I made a personalized hybrid birthday card. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a picture of the inside of the card…sorry!

I used the kit Learning Curve by Andilynn Designs at ScrapMatters for everything except for the scrabble tile pendant.

Not only were these birthday gifts fun and easy to make and personalize, they were also very frugal since I had most of the supplies on hand.

Do you have any tried and true stand-by birthday gift ideas?

Linked to: DIY Day, Get Your Craft On, and Works for Me Wednesday.

Tagged as: Crafts, handmade gifts, Scrapbooking