Parties and Presents: 2010

Handmade Gift Wrap

I had some a2 paper hanging around so I decided to stamp on it with stamps and ink to make handmade wrapping paper. The effect came out better than I thought.

I used this paper for my Mum’s birthday with some aqua and purple string I already had and my mum was thrilled to get these presents.

Let me know what you think!

Thank You So Much Gifts

These were really basic gifts like a Terry’s chocolate orange and body butter but I had some beautiful left over tissue paper so went to town when wrapping them up, I made handmade gift tags with stickers and card. These gifts were for two people who I wanted to say a big thank you too!

Bath set hamper for friend – 2009

This was a hamper I made in 2009. I used a Clark’s shoebox and covered it with wrapping paper from boots. I got the ribbon and packaging around town. The contents I shopped about to get good deals. You’d be surprised the kind of neat things places like pound world and home bargains has to make a budget hamper.

I thought it was worth blogging because it was one of the first hampers I did and I was very pleased with it at the time! The contents were worth about £15 and the decorations etc were under £5. TIP: go into a shoe shop and often they give away free shoe boxes, great for hampers!

Clothes hamper for someone’s birthday

I love giving people gifts. This clothes hamper was for my friend’s birthday. I found this beautiful wrapping paper with flowers on that I decided would be great to cover the box for my clothes hamper. I found some tissue paper to go inside which went with it. I got the tissue paper off Amazon and the wrapping paper by Rachel Taylor designs. The gift tag was handmade; I used patterned paper and collage cut-outs. I got all the clothes and accessories for the gift from Primark. I spent about £18 covering all costs which wasn't that bad.

The 5 Senses Birthday Party

This is the most recent birthday party I’ve had. My birthdays in July and this year I decided to have a 5 senses party. The idea is that the games would be based around the 5 senses, smell, touch, taste, hear and sight! I thought this theme would provide a more grown up appeal and add a bit more sophistication to my parties.

For the invitation, I wanted to try something totally different so I got some triangle shaped boxes and put sweets and a message inside. These were really cute, I got the boxes off a party supplies website!

For touch I had the moisturiser game. I bought about five miniature moisturisers and put them into a letter pot, for example Nivea could have been A etc. I provided a score sheet and guests could test lettered pots and guess which the moisturiser it might be.

For taste we had chocolate tasting, this was similar to the moisturiser testing in that you had to guess from the chocolate which brand it was. I provided bowls of chocolate with letters on and names of chocolate brands. Guests had to match them up. I did this game with different cookies also.

For smell I had perfume testing. I sprayed perfume onto pieces of card and guests had to guess from the smell which perfume it was from the list of perfumes given to them.

For touch I had gift wrapped boxes and the idea was that an object was inside and you had to guess what the object was. Although these were for touch I found the boxes to be interesting visuals because of the wrapping paper I used.

For sight I experimented with stereogram’s which are images inside a pattern. These were quite tricky in the end and possibly too difficult for a party game. The idea was good but guests found it hard to find the shape within the pattern.

For sound I collected some images from Flickr and guests had to translate the image to other guests with the use of sound. This was a really funny game and the sounds made me laugh!

For the games that had a bit of every kind of sense I did those games at the end. I made a 5 senses quiz where you would find out your perfect match through the use of 5 senses. I made handouts after the guests had finished the quiz.

I also did a lush soaps quiz where guests had to name the soaps from their appearance, this game was half sight half smell. The easiest sense to work with from obviously sight, so I made extra games for this sense. I did guess the celebrity from the Lego figure and guess the celeb featured on the Simpsons!

The gift bags turned out well. I bought yellow boxes online and decorated them with ribbon. I put lots of different things inside like samples, sweets, perfume, candle and more. The little bits were relevant to the 5 senses.

The colour scheme was bright to go with the sense sight. I made a party game book from acetate and described all the games in that.

Presents I bought for other people at Christmas 2010!

I bought my wrapping paper from WHSmiths and Paperchase. Generally these places are more expensive but I wanted my presents to have a professional finish to them. I also bought ribbon and coloured string to finish it off.

For my friend Em I went to Clarks for a shoe box, I covered it in wrapping paper and made it into a clothes hamper. I got all the stuff for this from new look, primark and accessorize.
I have included a selection of photos for you to have a look though to see what the presents I gave out looked like!