Sis' Birthday Project 2009

May is one heavy month for presents, whatwith lotsa May babies and Mother's Day, and it's never an easy task coming up with present ideas. Thankfully sis thought of something for Mother's Day this year, so all we had to do was think of what to get for dear sis before she came back for her birthday dinner.

Then so happens we remembered seeing recipe cards in a craft shop in Bangsar Shopping Centre before. So when we were out with the Chief for dinner, we dropped by BSC to have a look again at the recipe cards and get a second opinion as to present suitability.

The Chief thought that it wasn't such a great present, as the cards were pretty small (about flash card size) and even if we got a basket to place the cards in it still wouldn't do. A round about the shop didn't present any other suitable presents, when the Chief suggested that we get a folder and decorate it nicely as a cookbook.

And seeing how it was already Thursday night, and sis was due back on Saturday, and this kinda craftwork takes a bit of time to do, we certainly had to rush now.

So we headed into Times BSC to get a nice 4-ring folder. And then on Friday we happily shopped at Popular and Papier for materials. Cardstock, embossed plastic inserts, ribbons, papers, whatever that happens to be cheap in Papier...Tell the truth, though, we had absolutely no idea just how we would decorate the folder, so we had to wander around the stores looking and this and that, wondering about the suitability. Ended up we had to get a few things to try later.

So Friday night we're based in front of the telly with our stuff set up and Battlestar Galactica running. Start off with the easy bit of cutting the cardstock to size to fit the folder. Even cardstock design took us ages wondering in Papier, looking for something appropriate for a cookbook.

Then we'd thought to try the corrugated cardboard as we wanted to cover the fact that it's a ring binder we were giving to her.

It's a bit tough trying to cut the corrugated cardboard to size, as it kept rolling up. But we'd manage to cut it to size.

We'd bought a metre of ribbon and a mini clip to add to the folder too. Initially instead of a clip we wanted to put a pen, but we forgot to get one. Once we'd the corrugated cardboard pasted on, we could finally put in the plastic inserts, and cards to use as dividers.

Decided to keep the front cover simple, so we just pasted the printout and stuck on photo corners for sis to put in any photo she fancied (we wanted to put in a photo of her cupcakes she made some time back, unfortunately the photo was on her camera and we didn't have a copy in our pc).

We found cheap overlays selling at Papier, about RM4 per piece instead of the normal RM10 price tag that we normally find. Rather nice design too, so we just had to add it on regardless if it meant that the coverpiece wasn't so clear.

And while initially the folder could have been used for anything other than just a folder to hold recipes, pasting thickers in addition to that 'Cookbook' cover bit ought to do the job...

And the finished piece. Then we realized that sis was gonna have a heck of a job lugging this back to Sporeland...