Gift Archives ~ A Big Creative Diary

Easter tulip gift

March 23, 2016 Maxime Winnubst

Easter is almost here!! Whoop, whoop. I always love Easter… it feels like a promise of better weather and summer coming. Plus we celebrate Easter with both side of the family and a lot of food… So yeah, sounds like a great holiday to me.

My mom and I went to IKEA the other day and brought home these cute Easter dishtowels. I knew I wanted to create an Easter gift out of this… so here we go. An Easter tulip gift, perfect for giving your egg-hunt hostess.

Here is what you need:

Cute IKEA Easter dishtowel.
Planter
A cute spring flower, I used tulips bought at IKEA.
Ribbon

What to do:

Place the planter in the middle of the dishtowel. Fold the first point into the planter and continue to do so. You will reach the point where your whole planter is covered with the dishtowel. Check if you like the folding and if something sticks out somewhere you can adjust this at this point. Cut a piece of ribbon and tie this around the planter to finish of the look. Add the tulips and ready is your Easter tulip gift.

Happy Easter!!!!

Gift wrapping in old newspapers

March 9, 2016 Maxime Winnubst

There's nothing better then giving gifts. My uncle's and grandma's birthdays were coming up and I wanted to give them something special. As being the photographer of the family I have an archive full of great pictures off the whole family. I came across a discount for framed photo's at 'Herinnnering op Linnen' which is my favorite shop for ordering canvases, because their prizes and quality are great. And now they also offered framed photos.

I ordered two framed photos with different frames. I loved the quality and there is honestly nothing better then a correctly framed picture.

Here is what you need for wrapping your gift with old newspaper:

A stack of old newspapers (I got these from my dad, who saved them to make the puzzels, which he never did of course :P)
Ribbons of your choosing
Tape
A cute gift tag (Which you can find on Pinterest)

What to do:

Wrap the present to your liking. Write a happy birthday message on you gift tag. Attach the ribbon and the tag to the gift!

You're now ready to steal the show with your present!

Oma loved the gift!

Are you looking for more gift ideas? Check these out:

Tea gift basket with cute Ikea crate!

Awesome gift idea: Hot choco in a jar

How to make the best DIY pillow cases!

February 10, 2016 Amber Winnubst

Don’t you just love these pillow cases above?! Thank god they are only 35 euro’s… wait, what? That's a lot of money that you could also save… or spend on chocolate, you know, whatever you prefer.

I will show you how you can easily make these pillows yourself in 3 steps for less then 10 euro’s/dollars (pillow cases included)! (Rather buy the pillows? Get them here)

The great thing about this DIY is that you can print whatever you want on the pillows. You can make it for a friend, love, family or pretty much anyone else. Everybody needs pillow cases to sleep 😉

I made Star Wars (Darth Vader & Stormtrooper) pillow cases for my boyfriend. The result:

He absolutely loved them!

What you need:

– Two white pillow cases

– (T-shirt) Transfer paper

– A printer

– A flatiron

What to do:

1. Print your image/print/saying on the transfer paper. Make sure your print is a Word-file so it is in A-4 format (same format as the transfer paper).

2. Cut out as much of the white surroundings as you can, because the white parts will become yellow (in time).

3. Iron the image/print/saying onto the pillow (any specific instructions will be on the transfer paper package). Make sure you iron it on the exact place you want it to be on.

Enjoy your DIY printed pillow cases!

What would you print on the pillow cases? Let us know in the comments!

Want more DIY gift ideas? Check these out:

DIY Gift ideas for your love: Valentine’s day 2016

DIY Gift ideas for your love: Valentine’s day 2016

February 3, 2016 Amber Winnubst

I mean, who doesn’t love a thoughtful, cute gift? Yeah right, no one.

I’ve gathered some (DIY) ideas I just loved and think most lovebirds will appreciate A LOT. Most of the ideas below are really easy and fun to make.

1. Make your own ‘I love you’ Emoji pillows.

Click here to make your own DIY I Love You Pillows!

If you don’t have time to make the pillows yourself, check out this site. The Pillow Factory sells awesome (nerdy) pillows for an affordable price!

2. Open when… letters.

What you do is you write short letters to your love for when you’re not able to be there with them. Write the reason for opening a specific letter on the envelope. Example: Open when… you’re sick and you need a reason to smile. You could also include little gifts to go with the letters, such as your love’s favourite tea, some …. or their favourite candy (go as crazy as you like).

Check out the printable here.

3. Make his favorite dish!

Make your lover an awesome breakfast, lunch, brunch, dinner or whatever you like.

You could go for the heart-shaped eggs, for the hart-shaped pizza (tutorial here) or you could make their favourite meal. It’s totally up to you!

4. 12 pre-planned dates.

The idea is that, for the upcoming year, you’ll have a pre-planned date every month. My boyfriend actually gave this to me last year and it was adorable (I told him about the whole idea, but still). You can dress this up HOWEVER you like it. My boyfriend cut out heart-shaped pieces of paper and hid the date-idea underneath every heart. You could also give this to your kids or you friends, who doesn’t love going on a date! This idea is great for couples who want to get out more, now you’ll have to go, no excuses!

Again, you can put in mini gifts with every pre-planned date.

Check this out for a couple of ideas on how to make the pre-planned dates look awesome.

5. Make love coupons.

This idea is similar to the pre-planned dates. The biggest difference is that you lover can choose when to use a coupon. Choosing when you get a back massage or a breakfast in bed is kind off awesome.

Here is a FREE printable love coupon book.

6. 52 things I love about you.

You write 52 things you love about this person on playing cards and then bind them together. Maxime did this for our grandparents last year and it was a huge success!

Learn how to easily make this here.

7. Give them a ticket.

Make these cute DIY tickets and give them a ticket. Whether this is for a game of their favourite sports game, for a museum or to go to the movies, they will love it. You can choose to go with them or let this be a guy or girls night out. Enjoy!

8. Do SOMETHING with pictures.

Looking at fun moments together with your lover is one of the best things to do. Using pictures is a great way to show you lover how much you appreciate them. Check here for 35 awesome ideas.

9. Make a candy bouquet!

I love this idea because I don’t really like flowers, but a CANDY bouquet, hmmm, that’s the best idea ever!

Check out how you can make this here.

10. In case of emergency break glass…

Last but not least, put your love’s favourite candy in a glass kit and write ‘In case of emergency break glass’ on the front. I love how cute this looks and how delicious the candy will taste 😉

Check out the tutorial here.

I hoped you enjoyed this post and that it gave you some fun and easy ideas for gift giving this Valentine’s Day.

What is your favourite (DIY) Valentine’s Day gift? Let me know in the comments!

Awesome gift idea: Hot choco in a jar

January 2, 2016 Amber Winnubst

This Christmas I wanted to make a couple of gifts myself, so of course; I went straight over to Pinterest. I searched and found A LOT of Do-It-Yourself ideas, but I was really busy, so I wanted to make something that was quick and easy. I found several gifts in a jar and absolutely loved the idea. At first I wanted to put all the ingredients for cupcakes in a jar, but I was only going to make 3 jars so that meant spending a lot of money on ingredients, but only using a little. Eventually I figured I wanted to put chocolate milk in a jar. Here's what I did to make it look festive in an easy, cheap and quick way!

What you need:

Hot chocolate
Little pieces of chocolate (I used white chocolate)
A big jar

Optional:

A small jar
Small chocolates (or other small yummie things)
1 Candy cane, a red straw and a cute printable tag

How to make this:

Step 1 (optional): Put the small chocolates in the little jar.

Step 2: Pour the hot chocolate mix in the jar, but keep in mind that you need some space for the little pieces of chocolate!

Step 3: Pour some small chocolates on top of the hot chocolate mix.

Step 4: Top it off as you like! I used a candycane, a cute printable tag and a red straw.

Step 5: Write the instructions on the printable, so the reciever knows how to make some delicious hot choco. I wrote down how much hot milk 2 tablespoons needed (it was the direction that was on the original package).

We also had some walnuts from our own garden, so I gave a little bag of those as well!

I hope you enjoyed this easy DIY (Christmas) gift!

Tea gift basket with cute Ikea crate!

December 30, 2015 Maxime Winnubst

My mom and I were at IKEA this week. This is our favorite mother-daughter outing. We love to walk through the store and get inspired by all the new products and smart solutions IKEA is always able to come up with.

On Wednesday we had a birthday of a dear friend, for whom we needed a gift. So when we ran into this awesome crate “SKOGSTA”. Which we thought would make the perfect basis for a tea gift basket. We decided to pair it with these awesome tea IKEA 365+ glasses.

Here is what you need:

Skogsta crate – IKEA
2 tea glasses
1 towel
3 packages of tea
Candy, cookies, chocolate or something similar.
Cute printable tag

ENJOY!!!!

Wrapping Christmas Gifts

December 24, 2015 Maxime Winnubst

For Christmas our family exchanges Christmas gifts. This year I wrapped my gifts in cardboard paper and used these great printable tags I found on Pinterest.

Family recipe book

December 10, 2015 Maxime Winnubst

This year we have an American cousin off my dad and her family living in the Netherlands. We are showing them the Netherlands and they are joining our family traditions such as birthdays, parties and Sinterklaas.

For Sinterklaas they asked us for our secret family recipes, I found this was such a thoughtful and fun gift that I wanted to turn it into something special. I collected the recipes from different family members and used my own old recipe book.

I had some hand written recipes from my grandma that I scanned, in order to give the book some originality and character.

I designed the book in InDesign and used coloured labels on the sides of the page to divide the book in different sub-categories; soups, bites, main courses, cakes, deserts, etc.

Here is what you need:

Favourite family recipes
Thicker A4 paper
Scanner + printer
Computer design program like InDesign or Word
Perforator
A4 folder with ring binder

Beer & Wine advent calendars

December 1, 2015 Maxime Winnubst

For Sinterklaas we wanted give my grandparents something special. My mom came with the great idea to make a beer advent calendar. Here you can buy beer bottles in crates of 24, the perfect amount for a count down till Christmas.

But grandma is more of a wine lover, so we decided to do the same, but with little wine bottles. You can buy these at the bigger supermarkets. For this we chose to combine white and red wine.

We wrapped the crates with Christmas paper and wrote numbers on little round stickers.

Here is what you need:

Crate for 24 items
24 bottles of beer of wine (or any other drink of course)
Christmas wrapping paper
Round stickers
Pen
Piece of paper to hide the contents when giving this as a gift.

A blog about our lives, the things that inspire us and make us happy!

Category: Gift

Easter tulip gift

Gift wrapping in old newspapers

How to make the best DIY pillow cases!

DIY Gift ideas for your love: Valentine’s day 2016

Awesome gift idea: Hot choco in a jar

Tea gift basket with cute Ikea crate!

Wrapping Christmas Gifts

Family recipe book

Beer & Wine advent calendars