Gifts For My Niece

My niece is into the color teal, so I purchased a paper pack of teal and white paper from Stampin’ Up and used that to alter everything I’m giving her.

I had a large clothespin on hand that was already painted white, so I just added paper to both sides of it, sanded down the edges and added her name to one side and a three-piece chipboard flower to the other side.  She can use it to hold notes or whatever.

I purchased large binder clips and used the matching paper to cover the black binder clip, then used a bottle cap and a magnet to attach to one and put a few stray matching flowers together with a brad to attach to the other.

I purchased a notebook that has the tear out pages and a three-ring binder.  My niece loves to write songs (and is VERY good at it).  I put rub-on letters on the outside of the notebook that reads, “LYRICS and other random thoughts”.  She can write her music in the notebook, tear out the page on the perforation, and then use the sheet protectors I put in the three-ring binder to keep her lyrics all in one place.  I made the notebook and binder to match and added a tag on the side of the binder that reads, “my songs”.  Now she’ll have a nice place to keep them all together.  And, I can’t take credit for this idea.  This was my sister’s idea and I love it!

The last thing I made (and am not satisfied with) is a bottle cap choker necklace set (or a magnet set).  I picked out and printed images I thought my niece would like and used a 1-inch circle punch to cut them out to fit perfectly inside the bottle caps.  I used metal glue to adhere the images to the bottle caps, then used Stampin Up’s Crystal Effects on top of the image to seal it in and make a glossy look.  This was mistake number one.  The Crystal Effects blurred the image and I’m not happy with them at all.  Some images even bled (look at the bottle cap that’s attached to the large binder clip).  *sigh*  I then hot glued magnets to the back of the bottle caps.  This was mistake number two….the magnets are way too strong and when you try to take them off of something they’re stuck to, the hot glue comes off too.  Bonus is that the magnet is strong enough to stay on the bottle cap and whatever you’re adhering it to without the use of hot glue.  I then took five different colored ribbons, added a button slide to the ribbon and used hot glue to glue on a metal washer to the button slide.  Now the bottle caps can be attached to the ribbon choker via the magnet (again with the problem that when you separate them, the hot glue comes undone because the magnet is too strong).  The ribbons have velcro closure to attach.  I figure the worse case scenario is that my niece can use the bottle caps as magnets and forget the choker part.  I put them in a metal tin with a see-thru lid and put matching paper around it to make it look more appealing, then attached a bottle cap to the top.  Wah-lah….done!