In this day and age of online shopping and gift cards, it can be a struggle to make gift giving feel personal. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly send my share of gift cards and I love when I receive them… but this year I am determined to add a personal touch that helps add to my gifts – DIY Gift Toppers.
They are cheap, simple, and fun to make. They will add a pop of color and a personal touch under the tree. Let me show you how to make some of your own.
Start by gathering some wood. If you are like me, you have scrap wood laying all over the place. Otherwise, head to your local lumber store and usually around the back of the lumber section you can find bins of scraps that they will sell to you for pennies on the dollar. If you’d like something more uniform you can go down the trim aisle and select a few long pieces of trim that you can take home and cut. Feel free to go with your own sizing but I was focusing in on pieces that were about 1 inch wide, 6 inches long, 1/4-1/2 inch of thickness.
Once I had my pieces, I did a quick sanding to smooth down the corners and edges. I pulled out a variety of spray paints. I then gave my wood pieces one coat for a background color. You could go with acrylic paint, but it will probably take a couple of coats.
When the background color dried, I then painted some of my favorite words on the pieces using acrylic paint. White lettering worked well on the dark backgrounds whereas I was able to be more colorful with the lettering on the white pieces. This is where you can truly make this your own. Paint your own words or phrases. You could even paint the names of the gift recipient if you’d like. (I intend to hand write the gift recipient names on the back of mine.)
Once you’ve completed painting, the next step is to drill a small hole for the Gift Topper to be tied onto your gift or to add it’s hanging strap like I did on mine below.
Easy right!?!
I cut elastic strands in 8-10 inch pieces and then tied them to my Gift Toppers. Originally, I was just going to tie the Gift Toppers to the gift as is. But then it clicked, by adding this little extra step, the Gift Topper becomes part of the gift. It can be later hung as an ornament or decoration around the house.
If you want one more touch, you can also go back to your finished wood pieces and do a little more sanding or possibly even staining to give them that worn rustic charm.
I just love these little things, and I’m so excited to put them under the tree. I hope you do too! Please make some and add your own variations and embellishments. Just make sure to share it on social media using #spoonfulproject so we can all enjoy your creation.
So cool. Love this❤️