My sweet friend Liz had a birthday this week. We're in the same industry and we talk on the phone almost daily. (Our afternoon phone conversations usually involve the topic of lack of energy, having so much work to finish, needing coffee, or not having any on hand at all.)
A few months ago I had re-created Liz's business logo for her and for her birthday gift, I wanted to create something handmade using her logo. I was going to make her a wall sign, but after it was finished, I thought it needed more. (Drapery ladies are really good at noticing when a design looks incomplete.) My backup plan was to give her some coffee or to make the sign into a box. So in my spare time over a few afternoons this week, I cut more wood, painted, stained, sealed, and assembled a supercool personalized wooden box and filled it with my favorite stovetop espresso maker, espresso, the recipe for my espressos and include a yummy, dark chocolate bar. What I loved, was that the gift was personalized, ON TREND in LIMEWASHED woodtones and used this season's top colors TURQUOISE and PURPLE. But the thing that was best of all was hearing the scream of delight when Liz saw her logo painted on the box. She loved it. She didn't want to open it. I had a great time making it.
I covered up the logo so she would be surprised when she received the gift. It looked like this when she first saw it:
