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Quick, easy and personalized gift wrapping. 

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DIY Doodle Gift Bag

Why not give the brown paper bag a face lift and use it as a gift bag? Cheap and easy to do, all you need is a sharpie. 

Doodle away, and create anything you want to spruce up the bag. Add a personal touch or message for any occasion. 

Doesn’t have to be perfect when it’s a doodle ;)

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Travel Package

When your best friend is off to live on the other side of the world for six months, a travel package can be a cute gift they can take with them. 

Obviously, you can’t make anything bulky or heavy as it has to fit in their suitcase. So I settled for a bucket list. She is going to New Zealand and lucky enough they have a couple of cool things to do and see...just a couple. 

Doing some quick research, and creeping her Pinterest board, I was able to put together two bucket lists breaking it up between the North Island and the South Island. 

Also included in the travel package were two letters. One for when she lands and gets settled in her new home. And the other for later, when she feels home sick. This gift is easy to make custom for the person you’re giving to and you can add as many letters as you want. 

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Family Tree Book

Over the past couple of years I have researched my family history, discovering ancestors all the way back to the 1800s. For Christmas, I thought what a great gift it would be to give my family a Family Tree book.

I compiled all the information I had found - birth dates, siblings, parents, stories, war records and so much more. I looked through crawl spaces, storage lockers and even made contact with a new relative I didn’t know I had in Ireland, finding photos I have never seen. 

Using Shutterfly, I laid out the book and through Ancestry.ca I was able to put together a family tree - maternal side and paternal side. 

The custom feature in Shutterfly, when making photo books, makes it easy to get the look you want. I was able to customize the size of the photos, where to place the text and so on. 

In the end, the book was a perfect Christmas gift. My family even made me order more so they each could have one. It’s a great gift that can be passed down through generations so the family history never gets forgotten. 

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Wrap It Up

Need last minute gift wrapping paper? Craft paper is the way I go. It’s simple, clean and can be dressed up any way you want. 

This year I went simple and stuck with shiny ribbon and Dollarstore tags. Previous years, I have drawn on the craft paper with personalized messages or holiday themed illustrations. 

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Personal Pouch

Using Redbubble I designed a personal pouch for my Secret Santa. 

Creating a gift that is personal, and custom is actually pretty easy to do. Sites like Redbubble or Shutterfly really help out. 

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Wedding Day Countdown

My friends were getting married, and as a present for the bride’s bachelorette party I bypassed the typical penis idea and went with a thoughtful one instead. 

With the help of her fiance, I created “The Final Countdown”. For the week leading up to her wedding, she got to open an envelope every day containing a reason why her fiance couldn’t wait to marry her.

It’s an easy gift to do, but holds a lot of sentimental value. The cards even made it into their wedding video as she read the final one on her big day!

p.s. she was the most stunning bride

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Photo Transfer

This was a gift I did for my mom for Mother’s Day. It’s easy to do and holds a lot of meaning. 

I transferred a photo of my mom’s parents to a canvas - you can transfer a photo to almost anything just follow these methods. As an added touch I had asked for a card that my nana had given my mom. I traced her handwriting “Lots of love Mum + Dad”, and photo transferred that as well. It’s a great gift with sentimental value. 

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Temporary Tattoo

If you can trace, you can give a temporary tattoo as a gift. When your friend has been contemplating a tattoo for a while but doesn’t know if they want to commit, what’s a better gift than trying out the design first.

What you need: - tracing paper - tattoo carbon transfer paper (which you can get off amazon, or if you’re lucky like me your friend is a tattoo artist and has some lying around) - gel deodorant or petroleum jelly

How to:

First get the design your friend wants, and print out a copy Grab a piece of tracing paper, and outline on your friend the area they want to get tattooed (this one is of the arm/shoulder) Then use a light box (or just light coming through the window) and trace the image into the area outlined on the tracing paper Get the carbon transfer paper and trace your design onto a blank sheet, press hard so it transfers well

Put petroleum jelly, or any gel deodorant like Gillette and lather it onto where the tattoo is supposed to go Press the stencil down firmly onto the area, smooth over with your hand Voila!

Let it dry before you touch it.

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Instagram Cards

For any occasion you can create cards using the person’s own Instagram photos. Simple to make and cool to receive.

I tried to pick a theme they had going on their Instagram accounts, round up a bunch of images, pick the best angles, and arrange them in a collage. You can do this in Word or InDesign.

Creates a great card, that they can keep and even frame if they want to.

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Wine Tour Survival Kit

This is a fun idea, that can come in handy when you go on a wine tour. Added bonus: a drinking game.

For my friend’s birthday we did a wine tour with about twenty girls. The Wine Tour Survival Kit was a hit! In the box it was packed with the essentials:

- box of Ritz bits - box of mini Oreos - sour gummies - an energy drink (for that extra boost) - wine charms to mark everyone’s glasses - gum - Tylenol or Advil And to make the bus ride between wineries a little more interesting, the Wine Tour Drinking Game

How to play is get everyone to sign their name beside one of the “wine keywords”. At the winery if the person explaining the wine says the word then back on the bus that person has to take a shot. Let’s just say “Palate” was the word of the day. 

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A Permanent Gift

I have designed a couple tattoos, and I have cursive tattoos myself. So when my friend asked for something simple, it worked out that it was exactly what he was looking for.

If you have nice writing then that can be all it takes to make this gift. Just try a couple of times, to perfect it. If you don’t have the “artistic” talent then getting a gift card for a tattoo shop for your friend is also a nice touch.

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A Literal Gift

When your friend asks you to draw “something rustic” for them...I took it literally.

I used a light box and traced the outline of the font and added the “bark” effect myself. Frame-worthy and funny. These are the gifts that are quick and easy to do.

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“I have this thing with...”

When your friend has a certain obsession, be it doors, floors or dogs, it’s easy to make a beautiful collage personalized for them. This gift was for a housewarming, and added a pop of colour to her new place!

Making this collage I laid it out in InDesign and found the photos from Google Images and Shutterstock. Each door was from a place my friend had traveled, and some were even doors she had stood in front of, or taken herself. On the back of the photo frame I made a grid saying where every door was from, as the personal touch.

How to:

Start with the frame. I went with the Ribba frame from Ikea. Decide how you want your grid to look like, I chose 5x5 because I wanted a “middle” photo. Take the measurement of the width divided by 5, and the height divided by 5 in order to find the size of the box you need in the InDesign document.

I found lots of doors on Shutterstock, all different colours and shapes. When arranging them in the collage I placed the bright coloured ones first and kind of worked around them to make the most satisfying layout. It can take a couple of tries to get the desired look you’re going for. This gift can be modified for anyone, just takes measuring, patience and searching for those perfect images.

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Map-able Love

This idea started out as a gift for a bridal shower I was going to, but was requested as their wedding gift as well. I mapped out the couple’s love, first where their love began and then where they got married.

Once I found out the exact place where the couple first met, I searched for a PDF of a map/grid of the town. Using Illustrator I simplified the map, removing elements like street names, and made it grey-scale. I added in “Where Love Began” but you could put the coordinates of the place or any other saying that relates to the person or couple.

When I gave the present at the bridal shower, she actually recieved another map of where they got engaged. So, to make a complete set, for the wedding gift I made a map of where the ceremony took place.

And together, they create a great wall collage.

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For the Sports Fan

When  your dad loves sports, it’s easy to get him gifts - till the point where he has everything. So for Father’s Day I decided to get a Blue Jays baseball and write what he means to me as a father on one side, and get my brother to write the same on the other side. 

It’s an easy gift to do, and can be done with any sports team and any sport. A hockey puck just use coloured sharpies - preferable the gold or white ones. The circular box I got from the Dollarstore. My dad and I had been to the home opener for the Jays that year and I had taken a panoramic shot. Using that I made it a wrap for the box.

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Sharpie Mugs

Quick and easy gift idea that you can personalize for anyone. All you need is a mug, a sharpie and an oven. This one was for my favourite crazy cat lady.

You can get the mug from the Dollarstore or Home Sense for cheap. I found a “how-to” on Pinterest and added a personal touch of putting my friend’s cats names on the bottom. It’s a cute gift for any occasion.