Cupcake Gift Card Holder

I took my last final exam yesterday and happy danced my way through making this cupcake.  Lol!

Here is the gift card holder tutorial that I promised.  I will say that if you're going to make one, planning ahead and having everything ready will make any new project go so much smoother.  Just like when you're about to make a new recipe with a lot of ingredients, it's good to be prepared by having everything measured out and things brought to room temperature if need be.  Of course, I'll guide you hear and clue you in there so you know what to expect ahead of time.

Let me show you the finished product.

I have seen these made with smaller flowers, ribbon and flower combos, large red beads or bells for the cherry on top and with bits of lace tucked here and there.  The possibilities are endless and the color combos could match anything you want them to.  I personally love chocolate cupcakes with pink frosting.

Okay, so let's get started.

Here are the things that I used for mine.  Not shown is: my hot glue gun, my favorite liquid adhesive, long white pearl head pins, three brads, tweezers, a paperclip (one of those heavy duty squeezy ones) and chipboard/cardboard.

Here is one way to make the base of the cupcake.  I used chipboard, DP (decorative paper) and my Sizzix die called Cupcake Holder, Ruffle. It's an extra long Bigz die that works in the bigger machines like the Vagabond, Big Shot, Cuttlebug or I used my AccuCut with a converter. There is another way to make the base without a die and Julie Price's blog has a tutorial that you can check out by clicking HERE.  If using the die, I highly recommend adhering your paper to the chipboard BEFORE cutting because it was a mess trying to get things to line up right before the glue started drying.  Just glue the paper down, us a brayer to smooth things out if you have one, and let it dry completely before running it through the die-cut machine.  I used three brads inserted in the holes to hold it together.

Once the base is together, cut a 3-inch Styrofoam ball in half with a serrated kitchen knife.  It is surprisingly easy to cut.  Please be very careful!  Then I put a generous amount of hot-glue inside of my base, slipped a gift card between the two halves of foam and positioned the ball like so.  Don't take the card out until the glue has dried thoroughly.  I have seen this done using foam tape between the halves, but to me it's more hassle than it's worth.

So far so good, and now it's time for the decorating.  I used the Sizzix Bigz die by Tim Holtz called Tattered Florals.  I cut out 48 of the medium sized flower (45 pink and 3 red), embossed them using the small dot embossing folder by Provo Craft, and then inked them up using my distress inks. 

I love to make my flowers but if you don't have the equipment to do that or you want to save a lot of time, store bought flowers work perfectly fine.  I have been known to buy bouquets of flowers from the floral department at Michael's and then just rip all the flowers off of the stems and glue them to my projects.  Saves lots of money since those little packages of flowers in the scrapbook aisle can cost $5.00 for six flowers.  I have 16 flowers on this project so....  I don't know about you but I can think of better things to spend my money on. 

After  shaping and hot-gluing my flowers together, I ran a pearl head pin through the center before the hot-glue hardened completely.  This made it easy to arrange the flowers.  Once positioned right, I put hot-glue at the base of each flower to hold them securely but left the pins in place. 

Don't you think the pearls make the flowers so much prettier?  I added 3 more flowers to each side of the gift card.  That's 9 flowers on the bottom and 6 flowers on the top.

My flowers need leaves.  By gluing the leaves on after all of the flowers are in place, I covered up the little gaps in between them.  Otherwise, you would be able to see the Styrofoam in some places.  I used about 20 leaves.

I hot glued the red rose and 4 leaves to one of those squeezy paperclips that hold a lot of papers.  Sorry, I don't know the technical name for them or if there even is one.  If you happen to know, please let me know in the comments section at the end of this post.

Slide your gift card into the paperclip.  The arms of the paperclip should slide nicely into the gap between the foam but if not, just give it a little shove and that Styrofoam will give way. 

So there you have it.  Isn't it pretty?  Believe it or not, that gift card is hiding in there. 

If you have ANY questions about how this was put together, products I used or where you can purchase them, ask away in the comments section and I'll answer as quickly as possible.

Thank you so much for visiting!  Have a great day and an even better tomorrow!

♥  Laura C.