What is the next best festival after Christmas? Is it the New Year's eve? Nope. The next best celebration, undoubtedly, is your best friend’s birthday!
Cakes, balloons, a party, a bit of bullying, and a whole lot of fun. Birthdays are crazy and the craziness is not just about all the fun and the flavors of cake that you want to order (sounds easy but trust us, when it comes to choosing between Chocolate Truffle and Red Velvet, you are definitely in for some major indecisiveness), it gets all the more crazy when you go out gift shopping for your BFF. While other people are going to ‘buy’ amazing gifts for ‘your’ friend, you have to make sure that not only your gift stands out, but it tells your friend how much they mean to you. To make your friend feel extra special on their special day, look at these DIY things you can surprise your friend with:
Bookmarks
They sound easy and small, but they are the best gifts for your reader friend. Amazon and Flipkart bookmarks that you get for free are way too boring and these personalized bookmarks are what your friend needs. Super cute and easy to make, you can thread paint or spray paint or write quotes or whatever; but we recommend you to go with the fandom bookmarks which will make your friend’s favorite books stand out from the crowd. They come in various types like magnetic ones, U clip ones, page corners, etc. and there are a huge plethora of bookmarks that you can choose from.
Personalized message diary
I remember gifting my best friend this diary on his 21st birthday. Just get some designer A4 sheets, cut them into four equal halves and get 21 of these. Now give these sheets to your friend’s family and friends (one each) and ask them to write cute messages for your friend. Once they are all done, collect these sheets and bind them; preferably, spiral bind and add a beautiful cover page with a cute note. I had used Aladdin’s Genie and his lamp on the cover and pretended that rubbing the lamp gets him his people!
Birthday card
No matter how modern we become, birthday cards never go out of trend. They are the most clichéd and the most heartfelt gifts ever. They take your time and efforts and are no more the normal half folded pieces of paper with a flower drawn on the front and a message inside. They’re elaborate and involve a lot of work. But who cares about all the effort involved when it is all done to bring a smile on your best friend’s face!
A city in a box
These boxes are super cute and easy to make. You can buy stuff from your friend’s favorite city, write cute notes on them (cute doesn’t necessarily mean cute, cute. You can always experiment with cringe-worthy one-liners and super annoying roasts too!), and pack them all in a box and keep it at your friend’s door. I, for instance, had done that for a friend who had always wanted to come to Varanasi, India. The box had wooden handicrafts, themed fridge magnets, flavored beetle leaves, some authentic Varanasi bracelets, and Rudraksha stones (a Hindu religious bead now used for fashion statements).
Room décor
If your friend is romantic and likes pretty rooms and similar stuff, then this is the perfect gifting option for you. Take another friend’s help and drive your friend out of the room before you get started. Get some photographs, some fairy lights, and some scented candles and off you go! Just bake a cake by the time your friend is back and surprise them. The room can stay like that till their next birthday and this is something that they will cherish for an entire year. Sounds amazing, right?!
Photo magnet with resin
Personalized gifts never go out of style and they are even better when you make them at home! Just like the personalized cushions, mugs, and tees that you can get made from a photography studio, you can make personalized fridge magnets at home. We add a tip for you here; leave the magnet in the process and you’ll get a coaster. Make a complete set and it will be the cutest gift that your friend will get this year. Use the links below for some ideas.
Explosion boxes
Remember “Jack in a box” from our childhood pranks? Well, explosion boxes work the same way. The only difference is that when the box ‘explodes’, instead of a joker or a boxing punch, there come out a lot of photographs, memories and in some cases, artificial flowers!
Photo album/ scrapbook
Who doesn’t like to save memories from the past and walk down the memory lane? Scrapbooks are almost like gifting someone their past; they work like literature, transporting one to their happy days and giving them back the best of their life. No matter what, these old pictures and memories (maybe the first rose your friend got on Valentine’s or the chocolate wrapper they had saved after scoring the highest in theirfirst college internal) will help your friend to fight the dark and uninspiring days of their life. In short, when you make a scrapbook, you are not only gifting your friend some beautiful memories, but you are also giving them an instrument to fight the bad days. Hello, nostalgia! And when you cannot think of anything, you can always find ideas for your scrapbook on YouTube like the one on this DIY link- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Tk7tPuGZio
Flipbook
We are all kids at heart. No matter how much we grow up, simple childhood games and tricks never fail to amuse us. One such classic ‘magic’ trick is a flipbook. Get a small diary and draw similar images (related to your friendship or some hilarious incident that you both faced) and flip! It is easy to make, is great fun and stands out undoubtedly. And if you think that you haven’t done much, you can always bake a cake and gift it along with the book.
Comments