Christmas is less than 20 days away by the time you read this post. It's really hell everytime you need to think about giving someone a special Christmas gift. How do you term a gift special? Gifts that are created with lots of thoughts? Gifts that are handmade? Something useful to the recipient bought from the shopping malls? Something expensive? Generic gifts such as soaps & perfumes? Thank goodness none of my family members celebrate the gift-giving occassion otherwise my head will break thinking of what to get for each one. And I am still running away to Bali at that time. But run away as much as I can, I still need to think of ONE gift. This gift is taking me a lot of time. It is less than 20% completed now. I still need to shop for colorful paper with designs, hard cover, get the photos printed, design the album......I hope I can get this done before I leave for Bali. Either that or get something from the shopping mall! But that too need lots of thinking - what to get?
I've actually spent an entire day, retrieving all the photos, doing some photoshoping on the pictures, print out the pictures and heck.....the color printer only has two colors left, red and yellow. Fortunately, I've got this magic color pens. I guess I have to re-color all the pictures. I wish I could just put all of this into a webpage and present the URL to the recipient - "Here you go, your Christmas gift is on the internet". So much for Christmas gifts.....
Curious? This gift is actually an album, created by me. It contains all the pictures that the recipient and me have computer-drawn (no one ever thinks I can be an artist huh?), all the funny poems that we've created, some photos and all other writings that will bring back memories. It's not expensive at all but time consuming. If you ever received a gift like this, what would you think?
3 comments:
This is an absolutely wonderful gift. I have an example in my gift-giving guide of someone who did an album like this as a one-year-anniversary gift. He then proposed to his girlfriend, saying he hoped she would help him fill in the blank pages at the end, together. Very nice gift.
But as you say, very labor intensive.
One note; if your printer is getting tired you might consider sending some copies to a local printer. If you have a Walmart down the street and don't hate Walmart, they'll do an 8x10 for you in an hour for maybe $2 or so. Just post it on their web site, with the photo center link.
Other nice gifts include weekend trips, classes in something the recipient used to enjoy and doesn't have time for or a new interest (climbing, cooking, glassblowing), custom jewelry from a local reasonably priced artisan, DVDs of a series the recipient likes, etc.
Cafepress has nice customized options. You might use them to print versions of your scrap book if that's at all feasible.
There are also socially responsible sites like www.tenthousandvillages.com and www.tarsian.com that offer interesting gifts and support artisans in disadvantaged locations. www.koniakow.org is the web site for a Polish village where many of the women make lace items like thongs. (They used to make doilies, etc. but these didn't sell as well.)
Good luck!
~ Solveig
Sorry, didn't read your location before I suggested finding a local Walmart. ;>
Thank you Solveig for the wonderful ideas! I've just finished coloring the pictures. Figured that more labor added into the gift would mean so much more. The nearest Walmart is 9000 miles away and local printers here? Nah..
That idea of leaving the blank pages is a good one too! I now have another 75% more to go to finish the guft!
Post a Comment