Presentation and personalization can make a gift turn from ordinary into extraordinary. With the help of May Arts Ribbon and Sweet Stamp Shop, I transformed a small gift of gum balls and a thank you card into a grand affair.

First I’ll show you the gift. I purchased two bags of gum balls at the local super store for just a dollar a piece and filled a clear package to the brim with the colorful balls.

Next, I cut about 3 feet of May Arts 1.5 inch Faux Linen Ribbon in White (length will depend on the width, length and depth of your package, pre-measure before cutting!) and in the center adhered some large letter stickers.
I then did a simple stitch through the letters and ribbon. The faux linen ribbon is wonderful for this application as the stitching doesn’t pull and scrunch at the thread line. 

Finally, I wrapped the ribbon around the box and tied a big, beautiful bow on top. I really like the linen ribbon for big bows too, because it is thin enough to tie easily but still strong enough to keep the bow shape!

And I can’t give a gift without a card! I chose the sweet gumball machine image from Sweet Stamp Shop’s Sweet Tooth Set, stamped it onto white cardstock, colored it with markers and then for a cute touch, added some beads and glossy accents to the glass part. Isn’t that such a cute way to bring in color, texture and realism to a stamped image? I trimmed out the focal image after stamping a sentiment from Scootin’ By and then adhered it to the card base with foam adhesive. However, I decided that the card needed a bit more, so I added a scrap piece of May Art’s delicious candy striped pink ribbon! (RG17)

I only had about three inches left of the ribbon so after cutting about two inches from the length at an angle, I looped it and stapled the loop. I then tucked it under the focal image on the card and adhered it with a glue dot. I used the last one inch length of ribbon as a tail to the loop, and adhered that to the card base as well. A neat little trick to use up scrap ribbon!

Blog post by: Karen Baker