Personalized Gift Card Keeper

I seem to have a habit of not making a habit of updating this blog—surprise,surprise. A lot has happened since my last post both uneventful and extraordinary. One of the extraordinary ones was – I got married! It’s been two months since the wedding and the house clutter from then has not lessened. Some of our wedding gifts are still in the living room while we find a space to store the yet unused ones in. We have a lot of generous and thoughtful family, friends, co-workers, and clients who gave us gifts that we ended up with a huge pile of torn, unusable wrapping paper after opening every single present. We threw the wrapping paper but saved the gift cards as souvenirs. Most of the cards had handwritten messages on them that throwing them away would be such a waste.

The handwritten messages on these gift cards are too precious to throw away.

So I bought a regular kraft album from the local school supplies store, a multi-purpose glue-stick, and some poster paint (black).

To make this:

My calligraphy skill is below minimum so I’d just say I “scribbled” the word “gifts” on the cover of the kraft album using a regular watercolor brush. I had some gel pens with gold ink saved from the wedding which I used on the borders of my doodle and to add some details on it.

(pics)

See how gold pops on black.

After the poster paint dried, I just put some glue on the back of the gift cards and randomly placed each one on the pages.

I indicated the gifts on the tags so I'd remember who they're from

It took me less than an hour to finish this album but I’ll have years-worth of memories of the well wishes of friends and family. 

One-ingredient Cakes

         I LOVE CAKES. My first baking experience was in cooking class in highschool. I learned to do chocolate cakes, butter cakes, and later on carrot cakes. Now more than ten years after, those three are the only cakes I know how to bake. Perhaps I have mastered the skill of the great three cakes? NOPE. I may have done a few palatable ones which my mama and sisters politely praised but i knew better :p I don't even recall looking forward to eating my creations.

         What I liked best about making cakes was the decorating part. While I don't enjoy baking them, I always looked forward to putting the frosting. Fortunately, I discovered new cakes that would beat my mama's One-egg Cake and save me all the trouble of mixing and sifting ---my One-ingredient Cakes! 

I made this for my sister's birthday

The first cake I made

My take on a Black Forest cake

This one's for my eldest sister's birthday

        

                The one and only ingredient, you ask? modelling CLAY....I forgot to tell you, these cakes also  saved me from eating too much sugar :)