Lord of the Rings Inspired Graduation Gifts

My one and only cousin (yes, I only have one!) graduated from college last month!  :)  I made her a two-colored puffy ribbon lei, just like the one I made my brother, but in her school colors.  Turns out Michael's doesn't have a maroon colored ribbon in the same texture/size as the yellow, 50 cents a spool for 3 yards kind.  It was slightly wide, half sheer (WHAT, WHY?!) and $1.50 a spool for like 1.5 yards.  MADNESS.  Which is why I spaced it out the way I did.  I think it turned out okay.  :)

 

And apparently it is not the thing to wear leis at graduations in Minnesota... so she didn't even wear it afterwards!  Though she did bring it and took pictures for OUR SAKES... but... still.   {sniffles}  My mom made her the other spiral lei.

 

My cousin and her mum!

 

For instructions on how to make the puffy ribbon lei, visit Penga's blog and see here for tips from me!

 

 

 My cousin is a huuuuuuge Lord of the Rings buff!  Like seriously, knows all the lines and watches the extended versions of the movie for fun.  Multiple times.  haha.  So while this is sort of Hobbit-y, it's kind of all the same to me.  :)  So I made her a card of Bilbo's house!  I was inspired by this on Pinterest.

 

I don't really have instructions or a tutorial since... I just made everything by hand!  I used the one I saw on Pinterest as a guide, especially since the only thing I knew was that Bilbo has a round door for his house.  I freehand cut the door parts/layers and grass.  The flowers were made with a paper punch I got from Daiso.  :)  Tim helped me draw the woodgrain on the door.  I would've liked to include a fence (as in the one Pinterest had) but I felt like it would've covered up my door too much.  And it would've been more intricate cutting I didn't want to do.  :oP

On the inside... I used a Hobbit-esque font!  It's actually called Bilbo Hand from dafont.com.  On the left I wrote a message and on the right, Tim helped me find this graduation-relevant LOTR quote!  It says:

 

"It's a dangerous business Sharon

Going out your door

You step onto the road

And if you don't keep your feet

There's no knowing

Where you might be swept off to."

On the back I put "Condon Productions" since it was a joint effort.  :)

I couldn't find an envelope big enough for the card, so I just used a brown paper bag I had.  It fit perfectly, actually.  :]

Sealed it up with an owl sticker!

 

I got her this LOTR-inspired "Prince and Lady of Ithilien" necklace from Etsy since Éowyn is her favorite character, I think.  :)  And of course, there was also a monetary gift since... those are the best, right?  ;)

 

 

 Do you ever do themed gifts?  What was your favorite graduation present?

                                               

Ribbon Lei!

My brother graduated from college two weeks ago!  I, sadly, missed it because we went on our anniversary cruise!  (Another post about that later!)

Since I knew I'd be missing his graduation, I wanted to send something that would let my brother know I loved him, but not enough to miss our cruise.  (Bwahah.)  :oP  At my college graduation, he forked out $40 (or was it $20...) for this pretty lei!

My college graduation

I knew real leis would be expensive, plus possibly hard to buy beforehand (cause of course if you buy it day of, they can super rip you off).  Also, he's a boy so maybe he wouldn't appreciate it as much.  :oP  (He'd probably appreciate a lei made out of dollar bills = $40.) 

When I was pondering this issue, Penga was posting about DIY ribbon leis, which was a PERFECT idea!  She has a couple versions but the two-colored puffy ribbon lei was my favorite.  She first posted about it here, then here.

So I set off to Michael's to buy yards of ribbons!  Though Penga suggested 50-60 yards of ribbon, it took me 100 yards and like... 10 hours.  :oP  Perhaps I am not so talented with the DIY-ing and such.  It definitely got faster as I got the hang of it.

Blue and yellow for UC!

See Penga's post for the tutorial!  Thoughts and tips I would add are:

1) Use embroidery floss/thread!  I started with regular thread and I was pretty much scared it would break the whole time.  I imagined it breaking on the day of my brother's graduation, especially  under the strain of other leis and neck ornaments.  I ended up transferring two whole spools I did on the regular thread to the embroidery floss.

2) It helped to anchor the starting bead to something to work with in the beginning.  Catch it on something... tape it down... whatever.  It helped a lot.  (I was so confused in the beginning when the bead was moving around and flopping all abouts!)

3) Penga seems to alternate each color like every two loops.  I did 8 per color and I don't think I can tell the difference.  Working with one color for 8 loops/passes kept my sanity a little better then every other.  Do whatever works for you, but in the pictures above --- 8 loops/passes per color still looks pretty intermingled (in terms of color).

I am super proud of it!  :D  And wanted to keep it.  haha.

Here's a "make-up" grad picture since my grandparents couldn't make it to his graduation at Santa Cruz.  And I thought my grandpa looked hilarious with the cap.  :D  My mom made the yellow/gold ribbon lei my grandpa is sporting (courtesy of another Penga tutorial) and you can see my handiwork on my grandma!  :)

Congrats Alvin!!  :D