Creating a Treat.Trinket.Gift

In July I went to a super.cool blogger event thingy at Ikea.  My friend, Natalie, is a pretty cool blogger lady who is awesome at what she does.  After attending a national blogger conference in the spring, she wanted to gather together bloggers who are in the Pittsburgh/Ohio Valley area. The Ohio Valley Blogger Meet & Greet was dreamed up, and 27 of us gathered.  It was a tremendous time. I won't get into the event details though, today I want to write about what I took with me to give to the others.

In one of the communications with us, she sweetly suggested that in addition to our business cards we should/could/might want to bring some sort of "extra" or "treat" to share, too. hmm. What? Business cards? Oh. Of course, it's a networking event. Established bloggers are attending. [Pep talk for me and now for you: Pretend to be "real" and established and you will be. Eventually. If you want it. Just dive in. Do it. You know, like Nike says.] Okay, well, yeah, I didn't have cards, or an idea for a treat. I started to wrack my brain for something original for both my cards and my treat.

Creating a Treat.Trinket.Gift 

I don't know about you, but I am always on the lookout while in craft stores for clearance items that can be made/crafted/transformed into something else. Isn't everybody? Oh. Not everyone is crazy. That's right. Ahem, well, prior to deciding to go to the Meet & Greet, I had spied Michael's clearance and they were practically giving away adorable little wooden trinkets (I think they were 3 in a package for 30 cents or less) and I wanted them. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd do with them at the time, but I knew that I wanted them for something.  Christmas presents for family? Crafting with the littles? I didn't know, but I bought some anyway because well, look at the photo, they are super cute.

Seriously, how cute are these?

As I was thinking about a treat, the trinkets came to mind but I wondered if it would be weird to give them to people -- do I make them an ornament? It was July, is that weird? I probably could do it, as long as they weren't too Christmas.y. Well, the kids and I stood in the spray paint aisle for too long as I tried to decide what colors to choose (you know, so they wouldn't be christmas.y) because I wanted them to be sweet and chic or some trendy word like that. My little girl almost sprayed her brothers orange while I tried to decide. I finally chose blue and yellow and we got the heck out of there. ha!

I hadn't used spray paint around the littles before and they had so many questions and really tried hard to be in the wrong place as I was spraying so they could breathe in the fumes (sigh), but after shoo-ing and many "back up, stay there, goodness, don't touch that" admonishments, the littles ultimately thought it was the coolest thing ever that I could spray the color on and it was done so quickly(ish).

Okay. Painted. Now what exactly? I needed to find something to fit into the tiny lattice holes if they were going to be not-so-christmas.y-ornaments. I had limited choices. I bought twine of different colors and double strung it. For packaging, I chose glassine bags that you would use to packages cookies and baked goods. They were super cheap (25 for $1.99, I think). The washi tape was on clearance. Woot! I bought four rolls for $3 (Oh! I also learned how to make my own. We'll chat about that in the future). I stamped the front and framed it with washi tape. The stamp was already in my collection, but it probably cost me $1 at Michael's. 

I love love love how you can see the contents through the bag -- it's just fun and sweet and whimsical (I hope! I think!) Put it this way, I know that I would have liked to receive this treat, I hope that the other girls felt the same way.



Question: Do you create for yourself? The way I seem to work is when I reach the point of being excited myself for whatever it is that I am making, I know that it's good enough -- perhaps, hopefully often, awesome enough -- to share with others. So yeah, I create for myself but for you. Does that make sense? Crafty people, do you know what I mean?

Also, what sorts of simple gifts do you like to get? To receive?  

 Yes, yes, you are. 

After the party, I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of the contents of the treat bag, so this one is a leftover bag that's kind of crinkled with a less than stellar stamp job, but you get the idea.

Inside I included two business cards -- one for my blog (I am excited to share my design with you, and how I picked it), and one for my Usborne Books & More business. I clipped them together with fun clips that were also on clearance -- 25 for 99 cents. Michael's was on fire for this project ;) I wrote my blog name and the website on the outside of the bag for a last personal touch and also because I LOVE to handwrite everything/anything all of the time (I really need to start up my etsy business nicolemarie arts with words, but again, that topic is for another day and time) OMG this post is so ADD. bahahahaha

So yeah, that, my dear friends, it what I took with me. My little treat seemed to be well received, and the treats I received from the others were simply SO cool!

If you take anything away from this post today, take this: You don't have to spend a lot of money on something that's special and cool for your friends. The materials that I actually used for this little project cost me less than $10, and now I've got lots and lots left over for other projects in the future.

simple. easy. fun. diy.

blessings! and so much joy!
nicole mArie