Christmas Pressie Crafting: Birthday Book

As I said before, this year I got all creative and made a lot of our christmas presents! Normally I enjoy making decorative little things, but this year, my sister set me a bit of a challenge. She is a big fan of all things Hoi Polloi, Touch of Dutch etc, but her room is full to the brim of little trinkets; the plan? To create something beautiful, but also USEful!!!

I found these lovely little treasure booklets from Panduro (my favourite swedish craft resources provider!) and decided they could surely come in useful for something. Panduro suggested creating recipe cards or something fun like that, but instead, I came up with the idea of a birthday book. A timeless book in which you record peoples birthdays with their year of birth so it can be used year after year after year. I figured the little pockets could also be used to store her supply of birthday cards so she's always ready and organised in advance! (Not that organisation is a problem for my sister... she's always organised... unlike moi!)

I got out my scrapbooking materials, and decided to decorate the outside of each pocket with the month represented... I had a lot of fun with glue, funky papers, ribbon, crinkly scissors and letter stickers! I tried to think creatively about what would represent that month effectively (e.g. snow theme for January, travel theme for July, ice-cream for August, pumpkin for October and fireworks for November!) Making each page different was a challenge, but I think it turned out pretty well in the end!

Once I'd done the OUTSIDE of the pockets, I got on my faithful Mac as always and printed off a grid with the dates down the side, and stuck it on the insert that goes inside the pockets. That way, Kristin can record the birthdays of her friends and fam inside!

She seemed pretty pleased with it (I think) and I'm quite tempted now to make one for myself (although after I've made something once, I generally lack the patience to make it again!) Anyway... in case you're after a creative little project, or looking for a gift idea for someone, I thought I'd share. I know I'm ALWAYS magpie-ing off other people!