Arden Prucha Photography

A girl friend was having a baby shower – for her second sweetie pie… a GIRL!

I had contemplated giving her a ‘newborn session’ as a gift.

My thought was WHAT IF she didn’t like my work, what if that was a total flop and made me seem overly confident in myself?

Well, my solution was to have Paul call her husband and we got the A-OKAY!

It was now time to create my gift certificate.

Since I am in the process of re-branding

(and have been since forever now, since i have never even HAD a brand/logo), I don’t have go-to designs to keep all of my stuff in-unison.

Believe me I wish I did, it would make everything so much easier, prettier, and MY STYLE.  I will soon, woohoo!

Anyway, I am a little off topic now.

Paul won a trip through this company and I loved how they displayed their gift certificate.

Basically in a folded – die cut – concoction.

I decided it was time to replicate this guy:

First step was tracing the original shape, but I had to use two pieces of card-stock; since my paper isn’t long enough for the entire length of the original.

I then used the decorative scissors to create a ‘pretty’ edge.

(I created the actual Gift Certificate in Photoshop using: digital papers, pretty fonts, and different brushes for the designs)

I glued the extra side on the back rather than inside, because I thought it looked nice rather than slipping it under and having a seem on the right side of the underside.I then clipped a small piece of paper and folded it into a shape like this and glued (I only used HOT GLUE on this project) the two bases down, then glued the certificate to the top flat part of that piece., allowing my gift certificate to pop off the envelope a bit.

Next step was figuring out how to keep it closed.

The original had a slit cut in the paper to fold the end into.

I wanted to make a cute intial stamp like enclosure.

I used a font and printed it out BIG and then had Paul cut it out, I am NOT a straight cutter – it would be an oblong shapped letter 😉

(below on the left you can see how the certificate doesn’t lay flat, there is some depth to it)
I glued on the envelope shut and then glued the letter on the envelope to ensure it wouldn’t pop open.

Then I used black felt zig zag ribbon and created two very simple loops that I glued the ends together (on the backside) – no bows, just a simple set of lines.Voila, a lovely homemade way to gift my services 🙂

I am NOT a crafty gal, so this was fun and very creative for me.