Expressly for You

It's hard to believe that this is my last post as a Guest Designer for Daydream Designs.  Wow!  The month flew by.  I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Diane for allowing me the honor of being a Guest Designer this month. I have really enjoyed working with her digis and she is such an encourager.  What a blessing!!    Diane has such a great variety in the store -- if you haven't already visited there, I hope you will soon.  You are sure to find something (or a lot of somethings) that you will like.

With Christmas quickly approaching, and with gift cards an increasingly popular item to give, I thought I'd make a gift card holder this week.  I found this Tri-Fold Gift Card Holder tutorial on YouTube by Holly Krautkremer that was perfect for what I wanted to do.  It's quick, easy, versatile, and cute!  What's not to like?  I used her tutorial as a starting point and changed things up a little to suit me.  :) My biggest changes were that I didn't make the pocket as deep and used matted patterned paper instead of stamping on cardstock.  Closed, the holder measures 4" wide and 3" tall.  You can get two holders (not including any matting) out of one sheet of 8.5" x 11" cardstock.  It's also a great project to use up some of those scraps that are lurking around in your stash.

I found a partial sheet of this coffee themed paper in my scrap stash.  It's a perfect choice for a coffee gift card and goes well with the kraft cardstock base. I matted the patterned paper on a burgundy cardstock.  The cardstock had a white core that I didn't want to show so I inked the edges of the cardstock and the kraft base.

The holder is kept closed with a belly band.  For the belly band embellishment, I die cut and matted the pre-colored coffee cup with whipped cream from The Perfect Blend set and used them to cover where the ends of the belly band meet.  I don't like to have the "raw" ends visible when doing projects like this so I always try to cover them in some way.  I used Frosted Lace stickles for the whipped cream and added some Star Dust stickles for the steam.  I used a Sakura glaze pen to add a little shine for the coffee.  I also used another "odds & ends" find from my stash and used these tiny pearls around the outer edge.  I love pearls so I think these have been in my stash so long because they are so tiny.  They're all gone now though.  :(

When you open the holder, you have three panels.  In the top panel, I used the matching line art image as a watermark and used one of the sentiments from the Coffee with Friends Sentiments set over it.  The middle panel is where the gift card is attached.  In the bottom panel, there is a pocket for a tag or card to write a message to the recipient.  I used another of the pre-colored images from The Perfect Blend set as my card/tag front and matted it on kraft cardstock.  Below is a picture of the tag outside of the pocket.

I can see this gift holder being used for so many different types of gifts.  It could actually hold up to 3 gift cards.  I'm sure you can come up with lots of ideas on your own but here are some quick gift ideas I came up with as I thought about all the ways to use this holder for special gifts:

1.  Give someone a Girl's Day Out and include gift cards for a manicure/pedicure, a favorite shop and their favorite lunch spot.
2. I'm a firm believer in dating for married couples. :) Friday night is date night around here (after almost 28 years of marriage I must admit some dates consist of McDonald's and a trip to Walmart or a $5 pizza and DVD from Redbox, but the point is time spent together.)  So of course my mind ran towards date night gift cards.  You could include cards for dinner at a restaurant, frozen yogurt,  & coffee.  They could have one big "night on the town" or several smaller date nights.
3.  Give new parents gift cards for baby shops, grocery stores and a date night.
4.  Give newlyweds gift cards to places they've registered and/or a discount store (Target, Walmart, etc.) for items they might need but didn't receive.
5.  If most college students are like the ones from our house, give college students Walmart/Target/etc., coffee and food gift cards.

Supplies:
Cardstock:  Paper Studio (kraft), Recollections (parchment), DCWV (burgundy), Express (white)
Patterned Paper:  Flair Designs (Coffee Talk)
Stamps:  Daydream Designs Digi Sets (Coffee With Friends Sentiments, The Perfect Blend)
Ink:  SU (Creamy Caramel)
Embellishments/Tools:  Spellbinders (Standard Circles Large & Small, Lacey Circles, Deckled Rectangle Small), Fiskars border punch (Threading Water), SU Slit punch, Sakura Glaze pen, Stickles (Frosted Lace, Star Dust), SU Jewels (Basic Pearls)

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:
Pile It On Challenge #48 - Anything BUT Christmas card
Word Art Wednesday #56 - Anything Goes
Paper Pretties Monday #67 (PPMC67)  - Anything Goes
The Kraft Journal - Holiday Gift idea
Shopping Our Stash #79 - Use odds & ends from your stash (my paper and pearls)
Tuesday Throwdown #125 - Lots of Layers
Simon Says Stamp - Anything Goes
Spark Your Creativity Now! Challenge #3 - Anything Goes 

Thanks for stopping by today.  I hope you'll give this little gift card holder a try.  More importantly, I hope you'll go shopping at Daydream Designs and pick up some fantastic digi stamps & papers.