Graduation Gift Craftiness Rednesday

(Please visit Sue at It's A Very Cherry World  for more Rednesday fun!)

Happy Rednesday!

This week I'm sharing the gift I put together for my oldest nieces graduation last weekend. I was off to a late start, so didn't get to make all the things I had intended BOO HOO! 

I got hung up in thinking I would make her yet another book of quotes, and include family photos but it just wouldn't come together in my brain and time was running out. 

The Dr. Seuss rhyme "Oh the places you will go" kept playing on a loop in my brain all this time until it finally smacked me on the head and I thought OH YEAH!  Journey ... travel ... and I remembered the darling suitcases at Paper Source and I was off and running.

I had initially thought I could find vintage luggage and travel labels online to print out and attach to the little suitcase but in the small amount of time I had, nothing I found online excited me. So I was pleased as punch to find that Paper Source also had these darling vintage travel stickers and wonderful gift wrap with maps and travel slogans.  HURRAY HURRAH!  On my way!

 

And since the quote book was no longer the gift, a mad dash was made to conveniently located WHEW! Barnes & Noble across the street and the purchase of three books.  I had hoped to find interesting travel essays or travel memoirs but only found one book of travel essays that looked good and rounded it out with hardback copies of "Out of Africa" and "A Room with a View" - books set in foreign locales. 

Oh boy howdy!  When my brain starts going, it really goes!  I had all these plans to enclose travel postcards and letters, addressing them to my niece at faraway make believe locations and I was going to include leftover foreign coins and currency that my mother had brought home from Europe but time she-is-a-fleeting. 

But I also had the idea to include a passport for her and I googled "passport images" and found a play one for children and reduced the size (it was GINORMOUS) and had fun adding stuff to it.

I added my nieces photo and put a graduation cap sticker on it, had fun filling out the info ... calling her a "Citizen of the world", now that she's a PHD! 

I had hoped to find some travel visa images to print out and add to her passport page but couldn't.  But I did find a dingbat font that had famous buildings YIPPIE and chose the Leaning Tower, the Eiffel Tower (I just typed "Towel" ahhahhahahhaha), the Statue of Liberty and the pyramids. I couldn't find anything for the "official stamp" but found a dingbat font with a "stamp of approval" ... not the greatest for this purpose but, okay. 

(There also was a gift of some "traveling around moola", which some whippersnappers might consider the real gift but then they do not have the craftiness gene, alas! teehee!)

Lastly, I made buttons for my husband and I to wear to the graduation ... I used the photo from when we took my niece out for lunch to celebrate her going away to college in 2004 (symbolizing the beginning of her journey, leading up to this day) and scanned and printed out copies and put them in these huge acrylic buttons from Michaels. HUGE!  My poor niece, probably embarrassed her to no end but there's no stopping this proud Auntie!  I had bought paper graduation party hats to put together for us to wear too bwahahhahahhahhaha but ran out of time ... guess they'll wait for my younger nieces graduation in a couple of years, huh?!