This year three of my cousins graduated high school. Being the oldest this only magnified my age since I remember when they were born! As with all my cousins I’ve tried to create a unique and memorable grad gift and this year I had to do that times three!

Usually I am not a fan of giving gift cards. I find them pretty impersonal, unless a person has specifically requested one. However, when I think back to my time in college what was the number one thing on my mind? Food! So gift cards it was! I started with looking at local restaurants near their perspective colleges and then analyzing where they could get the most food for the buck.

I then spent five minutes explaining to a guy in the checkout line that yes, I was buying all of these. No, I didn’t get some special points for them. Yes, they were actually gifts for people.

Next I perused my local craft store trying to come up with a cool way of presenting them. After 30 minutes of wandering the aisles I came up with a plan. Tags, mini sacks, binder rings and washi tape.

The mini sacks happened to be the exact same size as the gift tags, so I attached one sack to each tag, then ran the washi tape across the back.

After sliding all the gift cards into place I then wrote the gift card amounts on the front. I picked up these cute boxes on clearance and placed inside.

Finally I added a scroll to each with a Fairy Tale style story about the gift. It started with “Once upon a time in a village far, far away from home, lived a hungry college student.”

The boxes were a big hit with them all, and after sharing this story with a co-worker I know of a few more grads that may be receiving similar gifts this year!