When I was working on these gifts for our sweet little friend, I had some leftover papers with her picture on them. Rather then throw them away, I made two extra gifts. Unplanned gifts, as it turns out, can be quite fun. I had one sheet of A3 paper with a photo collage, and two small photo collages leftover from the Shaker Toys.

These were really so very easy to make. I simply ran the paper through the laminator, then trimmed the excess laminate. If you don’t have access to a laminator, I think contact paper will work just fine. The little one LOVED the placemat, and I gave the bookmarks to her parents so that they could have some fun. If I had known what a big hit the placemat would be, I would have made a whole set. Maybe for her 2nd birthday.

As I shared earlier, we just celebrated a sweet little ones first birthday. The idea for the second photo present I made came from the book Photojojo! It’s a great book of creative ways to use your photos, and it’s written by the awesome people at Photojojo.com. So, onto the project. I made these super fun Picture Glitter Globes.

Materials:

*Empty plastic containers (I used small peanut butter jars.)

*Adhesive Remover such as De-Solv-It or Goo-Gone

*Fun photos of folks you love (2 per globe)

*Laminator or packing tape

*Glitter or plastic confetti

*Water

*Light corn syrup

*Super Glue

Directions:

Clean out your container. Use the adhesive remover to get rid of any of the sticky residue that may be left from the label. Choose the photos you want to print and cut them to a size that is about 1/2 inch smaller in both height and width than your container. Glue your two pictures together so that one photo is showing on each side. Obviously, gluing them picture sides together would defeat your purpose. 🙂

If you have a laminator, great! Laminate your photos and trim them so that there is a sealed border of lamination around the photo to keep the water out. If you don’t have a laminator, seal your photos with packing tape. Be sure to press down the edges so that they are sealed tightly. Again, leave a border of sealed tape around the photo to keep the water out.

Make a mixture of equal parts corn syrup and water, enough to fill your container. Pour your mixture into the container. Place your laminated photo in your container and drop in the  glitter or plastic confetti. Seal the lid with super glue to keep the little ones from taking off the lid and making a sticky mess. Then, shake away.

Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures of the birthday girl playing with these because it turned out that our super glue was so old it was rock solid, so I couldn’t seal them in time. I did let her mom play with it, though. So, my extra tip for all of you is to make sure you have usable glue. 🙂

One of the best things about taking photos is sharing them! This past week, we celebrated the 1st birthday of one of our favorite people. I had a lot of fun making her presents using photos of her and her family.

Materials:

*vitamin or medicine bottles with safety caps

*photos of your favorite toddler or the toddler’s favorite people

*clear packing tape

*dry beans

Directions:

Remove the labels from one or more vitamin or medicine bottles. Make sure to use the kind with safety lids. Print a panoramic photo or collage of photos. (I did one of each.) Cut your photos to the right size for your bottle. Cut enough packing tape to wrap completely around your bottle. Center your photo on the packing tape, making sure to leave a border of tape around the edge so that the picture will be sealed. This will protect against drool damage. I had to use two strips of packing tape because it wasn’t quite wide enough to cover the photos.  Put 10-15 dry beans in the bottle and seal. That’s it! Now you have a great personalized shaker toy that even the adults will love.

I’ll post the other projects soon!