Simple Gift Card Tutorial

The card itself may be very simple, but photographing the stages and putting it into words…..not so much!

I needed something to present a gift card in and a birthday card in a hurry recently. This little project was born out of that necessity, as it serves both purposes. There are many beautiful examples of gift card holders to be found around the web, but they all seemed overly complicated to construct. I wanted something very quick.
I watched this video tutorial on Jennifer McGuire’s blog and that was my starting point. It was fairly close to what I had in my head and with a few changes I made it work for me. Not everyone is a scrapbooker (No! Really?) and won’t necessarily have 12” x 12” paper to hand and my modified design can be made with A4 card.

You will need:

• One piece of 8 1/2” x 4 1/4 card
• Two pieces of 6” x 4” heavy weight patterned paper or light card
• One piece of 4” x 4” heavy weight patterned paper or light card

Score the two larger pieces of patterned paper at 4” and the card at 4 1/4”. My paper is double sided but it doesn’t need to be. I’m scoring on the reverse, because I prefer to fold away from the ‘valley’. I think it gives a cleaner look.

Fold both pieces as shown. The sections with the larger pattern on are the two you will be gluing together, to form the pocket for your gift card.

Put a line of glue around the edge of your patterned paper (as shown by the orange line on the copy paper) and press together firmly. You could use double sided tape here. The width of my tape meant it would be a very tight squeeze to get the card in and I prefer the ‘wriggle room’ that using wet glue gives me.
To make it easier to get the card back out, I cut a half circle from the top edge of my pocket, using a 3/4” circle punch.

Glue the finished pocket piece inside the back of the card, just to the right of the fold. Next put some glue on the front of the paper section and close the card to stick it down. Add the 4 x 4” paper to the front and decorate as you like.

A few observations:

• It takes around eight times as long to put together a tutorial on making a gift card holder as it does to make a gift card holder.
• I prefer to work in inches on paper crafting projects, although I was taught in metric throughout my entire school life.
• Card comes in A4 size in the UK, which is different to the US 8 1/2” x 11” format, but not by much.*
• If I can alter a project to avoid the use of a craft knife, I will.

* By cutting a 4” strip across the width of A4, you’ll end up with a finished card that is not quite square. I don’t mind this as it’s less wasteful and I just trim 1/8” from one side of the 4 x 4” piece of paper, to make the borders equal on the front.
With any luck this will all make sense, but if you have any questions just shout.