Friday, June 26, 2009

get yer souvenirs, here!

so you bring home little presents from vacation: silly things like bookmarks...and those little souvenir cloisonne pins...and then what? just hand them unceremoniously over to the recipients? bit of a let down, especially if you are a devotee of cool giftwrapping such as myself.

usually i save the little bags from shops and pretty them up a bit, but this time there weren't any. i thought about making teeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiiiiny shopping bags. then it hit me: i had a brand new set of fancy pillow box patterns from the cutting cafe which i had never even used--time to break those babies out!

the most brilliant thing about these is the fact that they aren't templates, they're print-n-cut patterns. what's the difference? instead of having one example which you have to trace and measure and follow a number of times, you just print out as many full-sized patterns as you need, glue them to the back of your desired paper or cardstock, and cut & score on the right lines. i knocked out three of those babies in about 20 minutes.

i used pages from a south carolina travel brochure book which came free from the tourist bureau (reinforced with index stock) for the boxes and scraps of patterned paper for the fancy frames. i printed "greetings from south carolina" over & over on an inkjet transparency and cut it to fit the windows.

i also had some slightly bigger gifts (pralines, as a matter of fact) for other folk. i used the leftover bits of transparencies and a k&co chipboard label to make larger frames to decorate small plain giftbags from michaels.


...but somehow...they just needed one more thing. i was going to make my usual grunge flowers, when the lovely and quite prescient stephanie sent me a link to these fabulous flowers made from catalog pages! i made a rather less complicated version than the gorgeous blooms in the example (for example i used a lot fewer layers...and there was NO modge podge involved!) but i think they came out really well and i'm so pleased to have a truly unique way of presenting gifts from our trip!



(materials used: pillowbox pattern from the cutting cafe; 5 or 6 pages from a south carolina travel book; scraps of junkitz & imagination project patterned paper, plus a bit of blue suede paper packaging from...somewhere... inkjet transparency formatted in roughstone font using broderbund printshop; epoxy circles from michaels $ spot; prima glass pebbles; making memories brads; ek success circle punches; colorbox inks; zig pen; adhesives: uhu gluestick, gluedots & tombow monoadhesive runner)

16 comments:

  1. You are my idol, Lauren. I am the worst about wrapping and making a beautiful presentation. Your presentation is a gift in itself! Lovely, lovely, lovely :)

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  2. YOU WIN! We get the usual key chains presented in bulk and we get to paw though them. This is soooo much classier!

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  3. I love your wrapping! What a clever and thoughtful way to give a gift, I think it adds that little something special too.

    Great ideas and I am so with you on buying a template you can just glue to the paper and cut out (I have the plastic templates, sigh).

    Love your craftiness!

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  4. Oh Good Grief sista....magnificent!!!! woo hoo for the gorgeous packaging...{woot woot for the cutting cafe too!!}. You soooo rock my ♥crafty♥ friend.

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  5. Seriously, those flowers rock girl! And I am with you on the wrapping, I just go for it with what I can find. And this idea was fab!

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  6. Wow . . . I would be happy with just one of those packages, I wouldn't need the souvenir!

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  7. Beautiful, as usual! South Carolina huh? You going on an "Appalachian Hike?"

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  8. What a great idea, looks awesome!!!

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  9. these are so cute!! I've been shooting around making some bags like this too.

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  10. Awesome reuse of the SC travel brochure.

    You've got my wheels spinning now.
    I have AAA travel books from NC to SD that I can reuse and now I know just what to do with them.

    These are awesome! Nesties for the window I presume... I need to get this shape!

    Love, Love, Love the flowers too!

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  11. OMGoodness! These are gorgeous! You are indeed the queen of gift wrap!

    (-: Heidi

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  12. those are so sweet!

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  13. Ohhhh, geez, these are flippin' gorgeous!

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  14. Your brochure wrapping and flowers just plain rock ... seriously ... the sketched line around the inside of the petals is the absolutely perfect touch. And now I must go check out those box templates.

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  15. Yeah, I'm with Heidi...you are the QUEEN OF GIFT WRAPPING...maybe I should make you a little sign :)
    These are just SPECTACULAR!!! I would be thrilled to get a gift like that :) ♥

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  16. These are awesome love the flowers these are great.Thanks for sharing!!

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