Personalized art book, perfect gift for a toddler!

I don’t know about you, but I always seem to struggle to find a nice present for a kids first birthday. I don’t particularly like the bright plastic toys for these little ones and most other types of toys aren’t suitable for babies. Since most babies don’t talk by the time they turn one they can’t tell us what they really want for their birthday. Honestly, that first birthday is more the parents’ birthday than the kids… I want to give something that will last to those parents and help them retain their memories. What better way than to give the baby a personalized art book?

How to make the personalized art book

Buy any sketchbook with blank pages and look in your drawers for fabric, ribbons and other nice stuff to sew on. Cut the fabric at the size of the cover of your book. Then write the child’s name on a piece of paper making sure the letters all connect. Cut the paper, turn the name around and transfer to some nice fabric. Cut the name and sew it on your cover fabric.

Add any other things you like on the fabric. I used some ironing pieces I had laying around and flowers cut from fabric, but you can use anything you like. Once you’re happy with the results it’s time to put the fabric cover on the book. I used double sided tape that I stuck on my book. You could also use glue but I found the double sided tape a little less messy and easier to use with the fabric.

Once the cover is on, your present is ready! You might also like to add a ribbon or a button on the side of the book, whatever you like. 

I also had a brand name on the back of the book and I wanted to hide that. I cut a smaller flower from fabric and glued that on the back, using double sided tape.

I wanted something extra for this gift so I took some felt and sewed a little envelope to hold some pencils I bought. Looks cute right? The little girl that got this present was very happy with the small envelope, taking the pencils out and putting them back in was her favorite activityJ.

Do you have a great (DIY) gift idea for a toddler? I would love to hear about it!

Valentines school treat

Pretty soon we'll be celebrating Valentines. My girl obviously wanted to hand out a treat in class. And let’s be honest; I just love creating new stuff so figuring out a Valentines treat she can hand out in school is just fun for me. Luckily the shops started filling up their shelves with Valentines stuff right after new years’ so I had plenty of options to choose from. I didn’t want it to be expensive and I wanted to make it fun, so I started searching for stuff and inspiration.

How to make this cute Valentines school treat

I found really cute heart shaped boxes at Target (why oh why must they leave Canada???), they were just $1 for a bag of 6 boxes! There were bags with pink and red boxes and bags with multi colored boxes. I bought a combination of the two so the boys didn’t have to end up with pink boxes (because we know they really don’t want to). I bought heart shaped sweets at Dollarama and filled the boxes with a few sweets each.

     

I just love the idea of a bag with a personalized label, I can't help it, I just find it so darn cute. So I put the boxes in some bags I had laying around (I bought them a little while ago at Dollarama). I then made labels. Just measure how many labels will fit on one page and insert a table. You can then write whatever you want in the table. If you want double sided labels like I made them, be sure to use a text box for the upper line so you can easily rotate the text so that it’s upside down. Then just cut out the labels and attach those to the bags with the boxes.

Cute Valentines school treat, right?

My girl helped to fill the boxes and taste the sweets (which is a really important task obviously), she also made heart shaped name tags. She's really proud she can write so she wrote all the tags herself and decorated the tags.