So…tomorrow is my niece’s 10th birthday. She, like her Aunt Ally, loves crafts and school supplies and things that sparkle, so I got her a bunch of all those things (see above). I even decided to do a few crafts projects of my own for her present!
First, I made her a jar to hold her new pencils and pens and markers (sparkle gel pens!) I found a plain mason jar in a crafts store, painted it with two coats of pink glitter paint, and then used glitter glue to draw some hearts and flowers and dots.
I also made hand-lettered coloring pages. I’ve started hand lettering lately, and I’m not going to say I’m great at it yet, but I’m pretty happy with these. Mark the paper in pencil at 1/2 inch intervals (and if you want, mark the center of the paper with a pencil line), write out whatever you want to say (also in pencil), and then write a second line around each letter to give empty space for coloring. Then, go over the pencil letters with an sharpie (extra fine or fine point, depending how big you want your lines to be, as seen below (this was an extra fine).
As you can see from the next picture, when I was going over the letters, I changed some of them quite a bit. Don’t let the large amount of leftover pencil worry you!
Wait a few minutes to make sure the sharpie is dry. Take a good eraser – you don’t need to go to an art supply store (I got mine in a big box office supply store), but test it out first to make sure it isn’t going to be hard and smeary. Erase like crazy – be gentle, because you don’t want to crumple or tear your paper, but you want to remove all that pencil!
The finished product:
To assemble the basket, I grouped some items together in gift bags, wrapped everything else in tissue paper, and popped them all in that cute cat tote! Here’s the inside of the tote:
And here’s the finished product:
I’ll let you know if she likes it!