It’s A Birthday Gift, Suckers!

I don’t consider myself a crafty person. Well, that is unless you count the fact that I scrapbook.

But since I haven’t scrapbooked for well over two years, do I really still qualify as a scrapbooker? I’m thinking that maybe I should say I used to be a scrapbooker. A little over a year ago I set up a fancy new scrapbooking work station in one of our spare bedrooms (which is all I whined about since we moved here ten years ago, well maybe not all I whined about, but you get the idea, right?) and I vowed to scrapbook at least one day a week while the boys were at school.

That idea lasted about four minutes.

I recently jumped on the Pinterest bandwagon, and I’m hopeful that one day I’ll have the time to sit and try all of the great craft ideas I’ve seen on the site. 

You know, sometime before I’m 80 and in a nursing home and at the mercy of one of my daughters-in-law to feed me applesauce.

A few weeks ago, I came across a really cute idea for a fun birthday gift, and thought that maybe I’d try that someday. Not more than two days later, my friend Katheryn mentioned that she was turning forty on Monday.

Oh shoot, the BIG 4 – 0!

I knew I had to do something.

The picture that I originally saw used a small decorative box (which thinking back on it would have been much easier just based on the size of the opening), but I decided to use a coffee mug, mostly because I am a rebel.

With a cause.

I started with a mug, a styrofoam ring, and two bags of suckers.

For this project you will need an X-Acto knife (or if you’re a red-neck like me, you can just bust out the box-cutter), some fancy paper or cardstock, a straw, and some glue.

I suppose this is the point in the post where I should be demonstrating how I turned the mug upside down on the styrofoam and used the box-cutter to trace and cut four rings that I then shoved down into the mug, one on top of the other.

But alas, I took no pictures of that step.

Or the next step where I attempted to shove forty suckers into the styrofoam in some sort of organized fashion. 

Nor did I get a picture of pulling all the suckers out of the styrofoam and starting over.

THREE. TIMES.

After (FINALLY!) placing all of the suckers in a nice round circle, I turned the mug upside down just to see if all of the suckers would stay in place. And much to my surprise, they did! I then cut a piece of the cardstock with fancy scrapbook stickers in the shape of a square, mostly because I suck at cutting nice round circles. Then, I cut another square just a tad smaller and glued the smaller piece onto the larger piece.

Next, I used a silver Sharpie to write ”40 SUCKS!” on the smaller square, but really you could use any of the following phrases,

• Enjoy this cheap gift sucker!
• I’m cheap, sucker! Happy Birthday!
• It sucks to be you cause you’re 32!
• Divorce Sucks! (I know, I know, I couldn’t help myself!)

I then glued the squares onto a straw and shoved the straw into the styrofoam.

Thankfully, I remembered to get a picture of the finished product.

 I love it!

And my friend, Katheryn did too!

This post is linked to WFMW.