It's all about Zoe! and learning how to alter the collection I have amassed!

This is a whole gift set that I made to send to my neice for her 16th Birthday. I thought it turned out pretty cute. I got this We R Memorykeepers paper pack with purchase at Archivers and thought it was quite funky and youthful (which probably means it isn't - LOL). I know there is nothing "new" here to rock the blogging world but just a bit of sharing. I went to cover the letters and they are taller than my 6x6 paper so I thought I would embellish with ribbon at each end and in the middle of the "o". The ribbon "blossom" I have seen everywhere but didn't bother reading any instructions I just threaded ribbon folded on an angle on thread and tied it off and that is what I got. I went through my brad stash and liked how the brad echo'ed the dots in the paper and added a bit more whimsy. Then added some clear Michaels "dew drops" for a little bit of bling and edged each letter with white grosgrain ribbon to finish the edges, which was probably the most difficult part.

On to the next part of the gift - notecards! I liked mixing it up with the paper selection and the DCWV cards I had picked up in one of the Michael's sales ages ago. With my Nestabilies, my Palette ink pad and my JustRite Stampers I think they came out pretty cute. So just bear with my proud mamma moment...
And then there is this one! I think I frugally love it the best because I just used the ends that I cut off from all of the cards above to make it!

Then I was stumped! Yikes - I need to package these. How about a cute ribbon. No. That didn't work. It looked sloppy and it might come undone on its trans-Atlantic journey. What can I do? I will have to make a box of some sort. So I got out my Scor-pal and played.



oh wait!
There is something more!

I can't fool you - you saw them above didn't you?

I had to throw in some beaded pens. This time I put the patterned paper inside the pens and covered the pens with microbeads and then sealed them with Glossy Accents. I forgot to tell her the pens are refillable so I will have to let her know and that she can put other patterned paper in them because of how I did them.
Then I just had to have a go at a mini mailbox - perfect to send a few post-it notes

I would have loved to put some stamps in the mail box but she is overseas so that wouldn't really work. I also added loads of fun school supplies. She is planning on training to be a Nursery school/Pre-school teacher so I hope all the little fun supplies will come in handy with her school work or just be whimsical play for her.

I think these are the first set of alterables I have done so I'm pretty pleased with them - hope you like.

And thanks for the previous comments - I do my blog to keep my friends (past, present and future) up to date with my hobby, but its always nice when someone likes something and tells me! I really need to make more effort to leave some blog love!

Hopefully the ingredient list for this is pretty straightforward so I won't bother with this post.