Crafting Secrets

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Say the word “bookmark” and most people will immediately think of somber libraries with stern-faced librarians, or bits of tasseled old leather in-between the pages of dusty bibles!  However, a bookmark doesn’t have to be such a grim and serious product. It’s actually one of the most usable print products for your home or office.

Used in business as a marketing tool or in the home environment as a gift for your friends and family, a bookmark is a pretty nifty item. Here are a few bookmark ideas for your home and business that you might not have considered:

Personalized bookmarks for the home 

Custom bookmarks are a really nice accompaniment to any book that you’re giving as a gift. If you’re gifting a self-help book, an academic text, or other book with personal significance, you could include a quote from the author or a heartfelt message about how the book has helped you in your life or studies.  You could even use a bookmark as part of the gift-wrapping. A personalized “gift tag” would be a great complement to any book.  Create a bookmark that reflects the book’s cover graphic or find photographs of scenery, places, or pictures that illustrate passages in the text.

Why not place your own portrait or pictures of your family on a bookmark? A bookmark can be a great gift in itself! Especially for those Grandparents and other family members who are avid readers.  A really great bookmark gift idea is to create a bookmark for a toddler or baby’s “first book”; put their baby photo on the bookmark and package it together with a classic children’s hardback, and you have a really personal and thoughtful gift.

Bookmarks are also perfect for celebrating Easter, baptisms, or other religious occasions. Include a patron saint or a favorite prayer on your bookmark gift and it would make the perfect ceremonial gift.

Bookmarks for your Church, Library, School or Bookstores

This may be obvious to most people, but organizations with lots of books can always use plenty of bookmarks! Nowadays, even churches and religious organizations can use a little help in generating interest.  Whether you’re a schoolteacher who wants to give ‘special bookmarks’ to their students as achievement prizes, or a librarian who has a weekly calendar of events to promote, a bookmark is fantastic for getting your point across – especially for organizations that encourage reading and learning.

How to make your own fancy bookmarks

If you’re an artistic individual, then it might be quite lucrative to sell your own bookmarks. You could establish your own online bookmark business, or sell them at craft fairs, etc.  Maybe you just want to create an extra-special bookmark gift. Here’s how easy it is to make the kind of bookmarks that you see in the stores:

Create a custom bookmark design using an online bookmark template (download templates at online sites such as OvernightPrints.com.) This template will give you the standard bookmark size and design guides.

Design using your template guides. Once your design is completed, upload your design and checkout your design for printing (this usu­ally takes about 3 days at most online print shops.)

Buy some fancy rope or ribbon from an arts and crafts store.

Once you have received your bookmarks, purchase a 1-hole puncher (they’re a dollar from Office Max) and make a hole in the top of your bookmark. Thread a fancy ribbon through using a square knot (two ends through the hole – then through the loop)

You can make some really elegant looking bookmarks using this simple method

Bookmarks for your business – Mini flyers and promotions

 From a marketing perspective, bookmarks are really useful. For a small business owner who’s looking to create an effective marketing tool then there’s nothing more pertinent than a custom bookmark to get your business point across. Now I know what you’re probably thinking; “What the heck is this guy talking about… what kind of business owner uses bookmark for strategic marketing?” Well, I can say with some certainty that a customer is far more likely to pick up a bookmark than a flyer! Why? Because they can actually USE it…as a bookmark!!!

There’s not a lot of love for flyers and postcards. All too often, they are barely looked at before they end up in the trashcan! Who can blame people for tossing them? What can you do with a flyer? You might give it a cursory glance but what then?  You can’t slip it comfortably into your pocket, you’re not going to give it to anyone as a gift, and you’re certainly not going to use a great big cumbersome flyer as a placeholder for Dan Brown’s latest page-turner! A bookmark, however, will do rather nicely.

 Create an impressive enough bookmark design to showcase your company logo, business number, or special promotion and you’re likely to get people really interested in your business. You create a kind of “mini bookmark” that is Stick a funny saying, some words of wisdom, a cute cat, a calendar, etc, and “hey presto”, you’ve got yourself a marketing product that your customers will look at for weeks…even months!

If you have an Internet based business a fun idea would be to create a “bookmark this” list of site bookmarks on your actual bookmark! This would be a great way to drive traffic to your sites!

Bookmarks as event tickets

 Another great use for custom bookmarks is as tickets for events. They are just the right size to fit in a person’s wallet or pocket. Many people use online printers to produce their event tickets.  If you regularly organize events, stage productions, competitions, or parties, then it’s a good idea to use bookmarks as an alternative to expensive custom ticket printing.

Bookmarks as Gatefold Business Cards

You can make quite a neat little business card out of a bookmark.  By designing your bookmark in two halves.  Simply download a business card template from a site such as, OvernightPrints.com, and design your bookmarks as if it were a greeting card – splitting the 6” template into two 3” design spaces (one for inside and one for outside). Once you receive your bookmark prints, you can fold them down the center and make a gatefold business card out of them! This certainly makes your business card stand out from the crowd and it is an elegant and sophisticated way of presenting yourself and your business.

Souvenir Bookmarks

If you own a guesthouse, hotel, or other business connected with a tourist destination, then you can create a travel souvenir that customers can pass onto friends and relatives. Use a gorgeous image of your travel destination so that they can relive the experience of being there and tell everyone else about how good it was. 

Use your imagination

Like most print products, it’s a case of using your imagination to think of new and interesting ways to use a product. Bookmarks are especially versatile, and it only requires a little extra thought and effort to create something really special.

Toddlers love gifts. Watch their eyes light up with joy as they open their gifts and begin to play with them and you smile knowing that behind the fun and games, they are learning. Because the best toys today are fun, educational and really cool. There are toddler gift ideas that really stand out from the pack for their quality, entertainment and educational value.

There are toddler games and toddler toys to classic toddler gifts like horses, toy train sets, toy cars and musical instruments for the kids. Even there new electronic toddler gifts like fridge phonics, the v-smile learning system and a digital camera specially designed for toddlers. Electronic toddler toys that educate are a very good gift choice for kids because they are at that age when they love to learn. Electronic learning toys are among the top toddler birthday gifts this year.

It may be very good for toddlers to begin life with some excellent interactive educational toddler toys because of the receptive learning stage they are at this age. Toddlers have an amazing capacity for learning. Take advantage of the large variety of new electronic toys, books, puzzles, and wooden toys available today. They will help you to teach as well as stimulate your childs imagination.

Learning toys for toddlers help the child build abilities or skills that help them in academics when they get older, because children tend to do better later on when exposed to letters, numbers and sounds at a young age.

Twilight Turtle is another gift idea that turns baby room into a starry night sky which comforts the child to sleep. Twilight Turtle projects a magical constellation of stars onto bedroom ceiling and walls with your choice of three soothing color options. Twilight Turtles shell illuminates like a nightlight to help ease children fear of the dark. This interactive and educational toy includes eight actual constellations embedded in the star pattern. Parents can sit with their children and identify these major constellations using the wonderfully illustrated Twilight Turtle Star Guide. Twilight Turtle helps make bedtime fun for children of all ages and makes the perfect gift.

Electronic Learning Toddler Toys are not simply toys, they are friends, and the friendship begins the moment the toddler opens the electronic learning gift and plays with it. The toddler starts learning their ABC s-123s and a lot more. Electronic toddler toys that educate are a very good gift choice for kids because they are at that age when they love to learn. Electronic learning toys are among the top toddler birthday gifts this year.
There is nice variety of toddler arts and crafts gifts. This is a great age to expose them to artistic creativity. Kids are extremely proud of their art and crafts. Board games for toddlers like Chutes and Ladders are a great introduction to the fun that can be had playing board games.

Do not spend hours navigating the web, search engines. Deals365.us helps you find all the best toddler gifts from major gift online shops all at one place. There are coupons and <a rel=”nofollow” onclick=”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outgoing/article_exit_link’);” href=”http://deals365.us/index.php?action=mer&merid=19465″ target=”blank”>coupon codes</a> to avail discounts on gift items. Grab the discount coupons right now!

April 25, “the eighteenth China (Shenzhen) International Gifts, Handicrafts, Watches & Houseware Fair” will be opened in the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Centre, close to 3,000 exhibitors, occupying nearly 10 million square meters area of the eight functional hall. Total gift of this exhibition will be down to dozen types of thousands, in addition to traditional arts and crafts, home textiles, electronic products, new and useful kitchen appliances, household goods will also be massive scene.

    Creative kitchen up to make life happy

    ”Food,” the Chinese people always pay attention to the status of food in life, kitchen appliances, household goods is accounted for in an important seat. Kitchen products, increasing competition, all companies in the marketing, in addition to the traditional model, one after another into the Gift Show to explore new sales channels. Gift Fair in Shenzhen, a large number of new products, the kitchen supplies and rich creativity, compared with the traditional pots and pans, bright colors, innovative designs, lovely warm, interesting people as they fall in love with the kitchen utensils.

    If chef electric mixer, chef cartoon style, hands on her hips and confident standing egg-shaped base, the people can not help laughing; fashion beautiful green apple soup pot, not only practical, shape and color on all the modern home good selection; happy smile more with Western knives, stainless steel frame and tender, take up and wanted a happy smile; cartoons omelette pan, omelette allow the metamorphosis of an ordinary bear, hellokity, Mickey and other shapes, so all amazing fried Eggs can also be color, flavor, taste.

    In fact, the kitchen can also be filled with Trolltech’s “Fantasia”, more lovingly crafted gift ideas kitchen developing debut in Shenzhen, a miasma of smoke past the kitchen to change the image, create a happy stylish kitchen environment, change the cycle, numerous and unorganized kitchen life. Selling kitchen appliances, but also reflects the trend of gift-oriented practicality.

  Technology element to the art of living together

    People continue to pursue high quality of life, making kitchen supplies from utility into a symbol of fine living. Many exhibitors as the leading representative of the industry, have excellent display quality, appearance cleverly designed unique technology and innovative household goods. Many products is integrated into a low-carbon, environmentally friendly, smart and other high-tech elements to create a better quality of life.

    Such as stainless steel tableware, high-tech production process, to produce the color of stainless steel, gold plating, painting, porcelain, grinding and other artistic products; another cup of the dishes, such as ceramic material lamp, into the nano-antibacterial technology, automatic disinfection health and safety; there are other new and useful and convenient fashion soybean milk machine, coffee machine, oven, make the family life more energy efficient.

    Kitchen with high-tech elements, so that cooking as an art, to promote industry-driven market consumption trends of new fashion trends, speed up the kitchen market maturity and standardization, product technology and health, design fashion and humanity, consistent with human-centered design, innovative culinary culture. In recent years, these products have gradually become business gifts, promotional gifts of force.

    As the largest gift show, twice a year in Shenzhen exhibition are a large number of buyers purchasing event, the invited buyers plan to upgrade several times, including agents, distributors, wholesalers, gift companies, department stores Group procurement and end-user, etc., all kinds of buyers attended the rate of increase, and to help advance the key buyers informed of new products and highlights show to buyers to develop a clear procurement plan for efficient trading.

The holiday season is a favorite time of the year for many. Some like the decorations, some like the food, some like the gifts, and others enjoy all the great company and fun parties. But no one enjoys the holidays quite like the children. After all, they can enjoy the snow, gifts, food, and fun without having to worry about any of the adult responsibilities that go with it!

If you want to put together a great present that will make the holidays extra special for the (well-behaved) children in your life, consider getting together a kid’s gift basket. This particular present comes with a lot of advantages. It is a relatively simple concept, which leaves you with lots of room to personalize the basket in a way that is assured to put a smile on the child’s face. You can make the gift practical, (if you want to keep the parents happy) or whimsical. Gift baskets can also be a great way to save money if you have more than one child to buy for, which I will explain more on later. The first step is to build the basket. Below are step by step instructions on how to do so.

Step 1 – Deciding on the Contents

Your first step should always be deciding on what you want to put in the basket. This way you will know what size basket to get, and how to decorate it. You could get things like mittens, hats, scarves, gloves, chocolate, candy, arts and crafts items, and of course, plush toys. Candy is usually a welcome item within a basket, but for those who want to avoid it, consider substituting crayons and other arts and crafts items instead. This keeps things fun, but is easier on their teeth.

A really great center piece for any gift basket would be a stuffed animal, because what kid doesn’t love plush toys? You could get any animal that fits their personality, like a plush lion, teddy bear, rabbit, or even a dolphin. Imagine using a penguin as the centerpiece of your gift basket, and then filling the basket with holiday themed candy. There’s a lot you can do with plush toys, so be creative! Find a stuffed animal that’s appropriate for them and it will really make the gift basket in to something special.

Step 2 – Finding the Right Basket

After you’ve decided on the content, you can go find the perfect basket. Remember to keep things simple, and keep to the classical wood look. You might be tempted to a get a highly decorated container, but keep in mind that once you fill it, the basket could end up looking too busy. Find a basket that will easily fit everything you’ve decided to fill it with. You can do this easier by thinking about the volume of the plush toy you chose, as this is probably the item that is the largest, so you should be able to pick a container based on the stuffed animal’s size, and avoid overcrowding.

Now that you’ve got all the ingredients together to a make a really great gift basket for kids, consider what you’ll need to decorate it and finish putting everything together. Most likely you will need things like wrapping paper, tape, scissors, and maybe even some stickers to make things really fun. Most of these items will be necessary to really give your gift some extra polish. Decorating the basket will be explained more fully in part two of this article, so stay tuned.

Is there a baby shower that you just can’t miss, but don’t have the money for an expensive gift? That’s not a problem. Don’t skip out on your best friend’s baby shower just because you are hard up for cash right now.

There are a great number of gifts you can buy that are inexpensive, practical and great to have. Here is a list of 10 items that you can give without worrying about putting yourself in a bigger hole.

1. You can find baby clothes that are cheap or on sale if you shop around. Don’t be afraid to use coupons on either. There are some stores that offer great deals where you can get a number of clothing items cheaply for under $10 or $20. The best way to shop for baby clothes is to get clothing that is out of season. These are usually on clearance, but the child is going to need the clothes eventually. Plan ahead and get the clothing a few sizes bigger than they are going to need right away.

2. Create a basket of inexpensive gifts. You can go to a discount store where you can find a number of items such as washcloths, towels, diapers, bottles and rattles. The store will have so many pieces for a baby that you will be amazed with how much you can get with just $10. There is nothing wrong with getting travel-sized items because this may help women pack as many items as they can in their diaper bag.

3. You can buy board books on the Internet for a good price. You can get a discounted price buying books in bundles. You can check the clearance rack at the local bookstore for some children’s books as well.

4. Anything hand-made always makes a cute gift. You can make a cross-stitched pattern with the child’s name and birthday. You can also make a blanket or booties for the baby. If you are good at arts and crafts, this could be a simple yet thoughtful gift.

5. A hand or footprint kit is fairly cheap and will cost about $10. These make cute gifts that you can create and put into a shadowbox.

6. If jewelry is too expensive for you to purchase, an engraved charm can make a great gift. The charms aren’t usually expensive and an engraving will add a nice personal touch. Look for different designs such as hearts, a cross or any other symbol that is close to the family.

7. For the environmentally conscious parents, plant a tree in the child’s name. There are a number of organizations that offer this service. You will get a certificate with the child’s name on it that will state where the trees are and give a personalized dedication. Some organization allow you to buy one tree for $1, so for as little as $10, you can get 10 trees.

8. You can get a personalized website for the baby where the parents can update the child’s progression for the entire family to see. Once the baby gets older, they can have their own website to play with. In this technology savvy world, this is a unique gift and one that could last a lifetime.

9. Buy several different clay pots and decorate them for mom. Paint them with pastel colors and use stencils. You can create three fantastic looking storage units. Mom could use them to fill different goodies such as cotton balls or safety pins, anything that a mother is going to need.

10. Don’t forget about mom. With all the attention doted on the incoming baby, the expectant mother is going to need a few items as well. Find some gifts that the mom can use to pamper herself or give her a coupon that says you plan on baby sitting five times to give her a break. Mom is putting in a lot of hark work, reward her for it.

Struggling with what kind of gift to get for that person who has everything? Last minute gift baskets ideas can help you find the perfect gift for just about anyone. They’re simple, unique gifts that can be customized for any member of the family.  They make great gifts for young and old, married or unmarried, grandmother or grandchild.  The only limits are your budget and your imagination.

No need to stress when in a pinch with these last minute gift baskets ideas:

Dog lover: Gather up some dog biscuits, dog treats, chew toys, a collar, rawhide bones, and a dog blanket or sweater in a large wicker basket.

Puzzle lover: Depending on the skill level and age of the recipient, put easy or difficult puzzles, a puzzle mat, and puzzle glue into a large basket.  You can even include a frame, if it is not too big, so they can frame their finished masterpiece.

Baked goodies: This is a simple basket to make, plus it has the added bonus of being inexpensive.  Gather up a basket, some hand towels (seasonal ones work best), and treats that you have baked yourself.  Use decorative cellophane bags to put the treats in, and then place them in the basket.  For an added touch, you can also include a recipe card for the treats you make.

Ice cream lover: For this gift basket, you can put small ice cream bowls, ice cream spoons, various types of sprinkles, different jars of toppings, cherries, pineapple, ice cream cones, and even an ice cream recipe book.

Popcorn lover: In a big popcorn bowl, put packages of microwave popcorn, some cans or bottles of soda, and a movie rental card.  (This type of gift basket makes a great generic gift.)

The college student: Instead of a basket, use a large plastic container for this gift.  Inside you can put stamps, note cards, prepaid phone cards, an alarm clock, pizza mixes, tea bags, instant coffee, hot chocolate, and a pre-paid visa card (or gift cards from pizza places and other restaurants).

For the wine lover: This can be a very expensive basket, but it doesn’t have to be.  The most expensive ingredient will, of course, be the wine.  Choose an appropriate wine, and then you can add cheese, crackers, and other light foods to go with it.

For kids: Instead of the basket, you may want to choose a plastic bucket, or some other for a container to put your gift in.  Choose gifts that are age- appropriate for the recipient.  You might choose a jump rope, arts and crafts materials, books, etc. (Please make sure that you take the parents’ feelings into consideration when you purchase a gift for a child.  Messy materials, such as finger paints, might not be appreciated.)

Gift baskets can be a great option for last-minute gifts.  They are unique, personal, and can delight the recipient.  As a plus for the gift giver, they can also be put together at the last minute-even on the way to the festivities, if necessary.  They are also good for a last-minute gift for someone who drops by unexpectedly.  (Having a generic gift basket or two is always a good idea.)