Gift Card Holder and Sakura Hobby Craft Crystal Lacquer

As many of you know I'm hand-making the holiday gifts that come from my family this year. While it is my goal to give everyone a hand-made item, there is one category of recipients that might get a gift card or two for their holiday gift--the teachers. We usually bring homemade goodies for the teachers--truffles, candies, apple dip. When we can swing it we try to get them a gift card as well, either to a favorite store or to Staples or the local teacher store as we all know the teachers buy out of their pockets to supplement what the school and state cannot provide.

Rather than a plain card with the gift card(s) stuck inside, I think the up-cycled toilet paper tube mini should be made over to become a handy gift card holder! It IS the perfect size for the credit card size gift cards and for places with gift certificates, the pockets could easily accommodate any folded piece of paper.

Back-to-School Gift Card Holder

Ingredients:
2 toilet paper tubes flattened
something to "bind" your 2 tubes together--I used the bind-it-all.
cardstock/patterned paper to match your occassion
[I used primary colors here as I wanted to use my sample for a back-to-school gift for my child's kindergarten teacher--hence the "k" on the cover]
quotes--formatted and printed on printer.
Sakura Hobby Craft 3D Crystal Lacquer
assorted embellishments [ribbon, butterflies, flowers, bling, buttons, brads, yarn, and bottle caps]
Marvey Inks and Ranger Stains
Beacon 3-in-1 craft glue &; 3D glue dots

Creating the gift card holder is very easy! Cover the toilet paper tubes with cardstock and a strip of patterned paper. once covered, take a moment to even up the tubes --all toilet paper tubes are not created equally! Mat the various quotes or edge with coordinating ink for mock-edging to add a bit of dimension to the quotes. Place a quote or two on the inside "pages" or provide a blank mat to leave a message for your teacher.

The star of the fun dimensional cover is Sakura Hobby Craft 3D Crystal Lacquer. For this cover I used it 3 different ways--2 you perhaps are familiar with and one is a fun technique I discovered about a year ago while creating my samples for a tag class that I was teaching!

After punching letters out of some cardstock that had these great alphabets, I edged the paper with ink and then applied Sakura 3D Crystal Lacquer to the letters themselves for added dimension. What makes Sakura 3D Crystal Lacquer different from the regular lacquers is that it has a heavier body. What that means to you is that you can get DIMENSION on the items you lacquer...it flows nicely but is just enough thicker that you can actually SEE the lacquer sitting on top of the paper!

I punched out a letter "k" for kindergarten and matted it with some red cardstock and housed it in a bottle cap for a handmade embellishment. The Sakura 3D lacquer served as the glue for the paper and as the "glass-like" cover over the letter--giving it the effect of those dome-covered embellishments without needing a separate "dome".

The final embellishment that I created with the Sakura 3D lacquer is made with 4 simple ingredients: Sakura 3D lacquer, glitter, cardboard and ink--to color the cardboard's edges [for that finished look]. I inked the edges of the cardboard--let it dry. I applied the Sakura 3D lacquer to the entire cover of my cardboard shape--an apple. While it was wet, I sprinkled glitter until it was fully covered--and then I zapped it with the heat gun! That's right...don't wait. When you heat the Sakura 3D lacquer, you can see it start to MOVE and then it brings a whole new meaning to 3D!!! Your piece will PUFF UP. You can play with it carefully--being sure not to over puff, as it will pop--backing of gently to see if the lacquer is now drying and holding the shape. When you are happy with the shape of the piece, stop. You can either let it dry and attach it--it will be more glittery--or you can add an additional layer of lacquer for that shinier finish as seen here. It's really a lot of fun creating your 3D puffed embellishment!!

To finish off your gift, you need to make some tags for the tubes. With coordinating cardstock and patterned paper, create the folded tags for the tube pockets by folding a piece of 2½×8" cardstock and adding a folded piece of patterned paper trimmed to 2×7½". Attach a ribbon to the folded end with a brad. The tags can be finished out with paper flowers and buttons, and wired butterflies. A gift card can be attached inside a pocket with a glue dot. A special note from your child could be tucked into the other tag or another gift card!

Finally attach fibers, fabric or ribbons to the binding to jazz it up a bit! I try to use leftovers from other projects to save cost and have that satisfaction of reusing, reducing and recycling!

Thank you for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed my project. I really hope someone in LA is saying "WOW!"

To enjoy other projects made with Sakura 3D Crystal Lacquer and other Sakura Hobby Craft products, check out their blog!!