Simple Gift Idea

I love giving plants and flowers as gifts.  I also love putting them together myself and including some personal details.  I think about the recipient's decor and lifestyle when designing a planted gift.  For this particular gift, I chose a succulent.  Succulents are relatively easy to maintain and this friend of mine has a baby and works full time leaving little time for maintaining extras like plants and such. 

I chose a beautiful elegant tulip shaped clay pot in a neutral tone.  Her decorating sense is clean, clear soft neutrals. I picked it up at one of my favorite local garden centers along with this wonderful mossy green succulent.  I made sure that the little plastic pot would simply fit into the decorative pot.  I never transplant the succulent into the decorative pot.  It makes the care of it so much easier.  Also, the space between the bottom of the plastic pot and the decorative pot will help with drainage.

I always have Spanish moss sitting around.  It is a staple in my supplies.  Tucking a little moss in the top hides the little plastic post and finishes off the gift nicely.  I also picked up a tiny silk butterfly and push it onto a wire.  I could just pop it right into the soil, but I have started gluing a little clip to the other end.  I do this because it affords me more flexibility on where I can place it and makes the butterfly (or bird) more secure. 

I wanted to add an additional personal touch.  She is a super good friend, and I want to go a little further with the personalization.  I just picked up a tiny letter stamp set at AC Moore for a $1 and I wanted to try them out. I took my decorative paper stash and stamping supplies out and fiddled around with a variety of choices that I thought would look nice with the pot.  It's summertime, so I wanted something kinda happy and yellow, like the butterfly.  I also wanted a little rustic texture, so I included a little corrugated paper too.   I pressed her name into a simple lemon yellow paper, simply cut it out, cut out the other papers.

I then layered them one of the the other, working them around and trimming when necessary. I used my trusty rubber cement to glue the layers together....added a hole punch, some jute string and tied the name card onto the gift. Done!

Simple, personal and fun to give.  Hope she likes it as much as I loved putting it together for her. 

-The End-

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