Christmas Gifts for the Co-workers

Since Christmas is coming this means that I can use gifts as an excuse to craft. Unfortunately this means that most of my posts must wait until after Christmas to be posted but as far as I know my coworkers don't know or follow my blog meaning posting their gift should be safe enough and I don't need to worry about being discovered.

This year I had some difficulty coming up with gift ideas because I wanted something that was personalized but not too cheesy. Last year I got everyone a cute coffee mug (that I found at dollar store) and I filled them with little goodies. I bought pocket Kleenex packs, some hand sanitizer, candy (because everyone likes something sweet) and a packet of hot cocoa. I thought about doing something similar this year but I did not want to be redundant, plus with all the great gift websites I was sure that I could come up with something.

I began to think and one thing that my work is missing is cute little name tags for our desks. Not that they are truly needed since we are a pretty small business office, however it was something that we have joked about needing in the past. So I decided a cute, quick and cheap gift would be name tags or desk plates. My first stop, as with most of my craft projects, was Pinterest however I quickly found that most of the pins were for desk plates that are sold on etsy and although they are adorable, I was looking for something cheaper. Inspiration struck while I was perusing my local dollar tree and I came across some small picture frames. I figured that these would make the perfect name plates because I could decorate them the way I wanted and the people could change out the picture on the inside if they truly did not like what I came up with. Plus it helps that they could be used to sit on their desk or hang it up on a wall or board to avoid taking up desk space. I am not sure about anyone else but I hate having things just sitting on my desk, maybe that's my OCD/organizational side coming out but at work if I can hang it I do.

The frames I used from Dollar Tree

Now that I had the basic structure of my name plate down it was time to make it pretty. I started with the frame. I decided to leave that alone since I wanted to go crazy on the inside, plus again, if people wanted to reuse the frame for something else that is easier if it is just a plain normal frame. Since the frame was so bare I needed to spice up the inside of it. I found some cool and different fonts online and used those to spell out everyone's name. I really wanted to make this a more personalized gift so taking the time to make them all slightly different I think accomplished this. I than traced the person's name on a piece of cute and funky scrapbook paper, put them in the frame and voila an instant name plate.
See pictures for more complete details.

Cut the Paper to the correct size of the frame

Using tissue paper trace the name from the screen onto the paper

Place tissue paper over scrapbook paper

Trace image using a sharpie to transfer from tissue paper to scrapbook paper

What it looks like after transferring. I used a sharpie to darken the image

Finished project.

I also baked some cookies to place on top of the picture and wrapped them with a pretty bow to make it a complete gift, and of course add to the adorableness because I wanted the outside to look as adorable as the inside.