Have you ever considered giving mini scrapbooks as gifts? Many of us would probably think of scrapbooks as memory holders for ourselves. Few would probably have considered the possibility of mini scrapbooks as presents for any occasions.
In a world of fast food and quick services, who would ever consider of presenting a homemade item as a gift for any occasion? However, in times of recession or depression, a scrapbook may well be the best gift we could ever receive. Nothing beats the thought of having someone pour their time over a gift for us. It would be more valuable a gift than the millions of items one just grabs mindlessly off the gift racks.
Over the past year or two, however, creative teenagers have turned to scrap booking as a profitable hobby. Many enjoy the relaxing time spent on arranging and rearranging items of pictures, photographs and even book markers on colored paper, doodling and coloring sentimental patches on empty spaces uncovered by the items.
Do we need to have artistic fingers to make a scrapbook fit to be classified as a gift? Enterprising craftsmen come up with scrapbooks of all shapes, sizes and thickness. Included in the package are little decorative pieces we can paste into the pages among the pictures and photographs and of course a considerably massive amount of glue or adhesive.
For the more nimble fingers, a mini-scrapbook can be made from scratch from a few pieces of paper, poster cards or even felt material of every color on which laminated pictures and photographs can be carefully sewn on.
These are but a few of hundreds of unique ideas we can garner for making mini-scrapbooks as gifts. We can always mix and match the ideas and change certain details so that every mini-scrapbook becomes a personal gift which will be treasured for the rest of the life of its receiver.
MINI SCRAPBOOK GIFT IDEAS:
Angelic Faces: Children are a gift from God. Nothing can win over those angelic smiles and cherubic twinkling of their bright eyes! Catch them at their cutest moments and put them all into a mini scrapbook. It will make a wonderful sixteenth birthday gift.
Best Moments: Have you ever taken photographs of a person's best moments at the tracks, receiving a much coveted prize, being congratulated by a distinguished guest of honor for an accomplishment of a life time? Make a mini scrapbook and fill it with poignant snapshots of those occasions as a memento of those occasions or present it to the person on his next birthday. It will definitely open the floodgates of memories and give the person something to remind him of his priceless contributions to the world.
Cuddly Bears and Other Animals: I am of course referring to stuffed toys. Every child has a favorite stuffed toy. If not, it will definitely be that particular baby pillow, bolster or blanket. My nine-year-old son still cuddles some of our stuffed toys on his bed when he feels out of sorts. Take photographs of the favorite cuddly animal in all sorts of positions, caption each photograph, print and laminate them into a pocket size mini scrapbook for your child to carry along wherever he goes. Include a photograph of you and / or your spouse and add a caption like "I'm your greatest cuddly bear". He will feel much comforted by it!
Dangling Earrings: Take photographs or cut out pictures of your favorite earrings or whatever you delight in, slip them into a mini scrapbook and wallah! You have an inspirational idea scrapbook for a fashionable teenager!
Flowers Forever: When the trees start blooming flowers and shedding leaves, get ready stacks of old magazines to put these gifts over nature in between the pages. For best effects, sundry the flowers and leaves before pressing them in the pages. Manually laminate them on alternate pages of a mini-scrapbook. Write creative verses or short stories about the fragrant good deeds of the receiver of the gift.
Recycled Material Mini Scrapbooks: Care to make one out of paper bags or other recyclables? You could make a mini scrapbook by binding paper bags, gift bags and even tough plastics together with discarded ribbons, wires and even braided cloth bits. Decorate the scrap-bags as you would a regular one. If you make one out of cloth as you would a paper bag mini scrapbook and decorate it with accessories such as earrings, rings and chains, I am sure that it will look marvelous!
Those were the Days: A friend once visited and took a snapshot of a colored photograph of me and developed it in black and white. He then sent it via anonymous snail mail to me. I was intrigued by what he did. Photographs would soon fade and be destroyed by wear and tear. Today, I recycle' my photographs by doing the same thing with a digital camera. I could electronically edit the photographs to show what I want and display them in software such as Power Point, Movie or just a simple digital photo album. For a nostalgic mini scrapbook, print and laminate the black and white photographs onto solid black cardboard paper and you have something from the 1950s! It will make a great memento for your grandaunts, granduncles and of course your closest your grandparents!
When I'm Sixty-Four: This would be a great mini scrapbook to give to your relatives who have reached the Golden Age and beyond. Have mini scrapbooks of individual family members' photographs and names in big bold letters under each photograph done up for each family. This is one set of mini scrapbooks I personally would not mind having even now at age forty-five my mother's siblings have family members which are three-tier deep. At celebrations, I cannot tell my nieces and nephews and my younger cousins apart!
The advantages of presenting mini scrapbooks as gifts:
~ They are greatly personalized gifts
~ They are fairly affordable
~ They come in powerful small packages
~ They are easy to gift wrap
~ They take less time to make than the usual big ones
~ They can last ages when laminated
~ There are millions of ideas to do one up
~ They take up considerably less space
~ Because of the limited pages and size of the sheets, the contents are picked with much greater thought and hence more valuable
In times like today when conservation is the key to pleasure, a mini scrapbook is certainly the greatest homemade gift.