Friday, April 8, 2011

A Handmade Birthday

My husband's birthday was this past Monday and I ended up making a few of his gifts by hand. I showed you the embroidered gift tags I added to his present here. I have been looking for as many things to embroider as possible, so I combined my love of papercrafts and embroidery with those little gems.

Months before his birthday, I received a request to make him another book using my text block bookbinding skills. This present wasn't much of a surprise since I wanted him to pick out the decorative paper, but he loved it anyways. This time he asked for a little larger book with blank pages that he will use as a scrapbook. My husband tends to never throw anything away, so now he'll have someplace to keep all his tickets stubs and other random memorabilia.



Ever since I got my letterpress kit, my husband has been asking me to make him a bookmark. He reads everyday and for months he has been using an old piece of scrap paper that I used to remind him to set out the pizza dough for dinner one night a long time ago. It is literally a torn piece of notebook paper that says "Pizza Dough" in large writing. It is definitiely time he got a proper bookmark. I thought this would be a fitting gift for his birthday, so I broke out my kit.

I cut a piece of heavy cardstock to 2" x 6" and letterpressed a background in bright green. Then I created a monogram in royal blue at the top. I found a tutorial online for making bookmark tassels and created one with yellow and white baker's twine.



While I had my kit out, I made him a birthday card as well. Using a background plate and yellow ink, I created a large sun at the bottom of the card. I added "Happy Birthday" and "30" in turqoise and affixed the white card to a folded turqoise piece of cardstock.


This picture shows all my little mess-ups, oops!



I got him a few other small gifts, but I tried to make as much as possible myself. I was able to use a bunch of different techniques and had fun doing it. I think it makes gift-giving even more special and I know my husband loves it.

Photos by Kyle @ 918 Photo

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