DIY! - Gift Ideas (Mail-friendly)

Hello! As you've seen in my previous DIY post, I made a birthday card for a friend of mine in Aussie. Today, I made a few gifts for her that I think will be suitable to be sent to her through air mail. I made two different type of gifts; the first one

is printed pictures, the second one is a very simple painting.

First Gift: Printed Pictures!

So for this gift, all I did was Google some pictures of nature and put in Pages, sized them to my liking, printed them out and got them laminated at a local bookstore near where I live. I think this is a great gift for people who live in temporary places as its easy to pack up, and if you wish to put them on the wall you can use glue tacks and it won't leave any residues or marks, and the laminate makes it last longer and it is a very good alternative for glass frames which break rather easily. You still can frame these, of course, if you wish. 

Second Gift: A Painting!

Just to make it clear; I am not a painter. Painting is not my forte, I like the idea of painting but I'm not very good at it. But I thought it would be a sweet idea to make a handmade painting as a gift as it shows that you've put in care and effort into it. Also, this kind of painting is rather special, its one in a million, and you can't buy it with money! 

Things you'll need:

1. Clear spray paint (used here: glossy finish)

2. Glitter dust (used here: silver)

3. PVA glue or Elmer's glue

4. Acrylic paint of different shades/colour (used here: 50 shades of blue; lol jk only 3)

5. A white canvas of any size

6. A paintbrush you don't mind being ruined

7. Marker pen (used here: black)

8. Metallic marker pen (used here: gold)

9. HB pencil (or anything lighter than 2B)

10. Scrap paper

+scissors

How did I do it?

First, I drew a heart shape on a scrap paper and cut it out to make a stencil. Then, I used the stencil to draw out heart shapes on the canvas. The arrangement was completely random. Next, I picked up the darkest shade of blue (Reeves' Ultramarine) and painted huge strokes on the canvas. Do this randomly but don't fill in the whole canvas, and try your best to not paint inside the heart. Make sure there's still white left and try to make it look textured and streaky. After that, I picked up the next shade (Reeves' Turquoise) and did the same thing, followed by the lightest shade (Martha Stewart's Surf in satin finish). Remember to wait for a while between each layers so that the colour don't get mixed up and the strokes can be seen. Now comes the glittery part! I used a brush (you can use Q-tip if you don't have a brush) and filled the hearts in with glue. Do one heart at a time to avoid the glue from drying too fast and tapped off the excess. Then to amp it up I used the black and gold marker pens to outline the hearts. I also used the gold marker pen to draw dotted lines connecting the hearts and wrote down the cheesiest quote know to man - If there is a will, there is a way. Last but not least, the most important part of all, I sprayed clear paint over the whole canvas to prevent the glitter from falling out. The clear spray paint will set everything together and now the painting is safe to be transported from one place to another without being ruined.

Progress pic yo!

Again, I am not good at painting and in my opinion this painting isn't very beautiful either. But I hope the idea of it will spark the creativity in you and your paintings will turn out much better than mine did. I know the gifts are extremely simple, but I think it is worth the effort and it will mean a lot to the person who receives it :)

If you have any gift ideas for college students or just gifts in general, do share it with me! And let me know what you think of these gifts ^^

-am-