souvenirs on a dime

I remember being small and at the sea shore with my family. There would always be that part of the day left-over for wandering in and out of souvenir shops. I vividly recall having very little money to spend on trinkets. My family still teases me that I once entered a gift shop with only ten cents and still exited with a bag! (it was a scrap of fabric!) I just returned from a day trip to Cape Cod where I still love to search for the junkiest of souvenir shacks, and I offer to you some easy-to-make souvenirs on a dime.

One empty taffy box from Cape Cod Salt Water Taffy gets snipped into book marks

and post cards.

Collected sand fills a honey bottle and is labeled with an office tag

Fill a jam jar with beach glass or paint and hang a small shell from a bottle. Not near the sea? Fill a canning jar with Epsom salt and enjoy its prismatic effect in a window.

Use colorful containers to corral supplies ...

If you like these ideas, you're really going to swoon over my second book, coming Spring 2014. Speaking of which, I have been writing so much that when my family and I went to a lobster-themed gift shop (The Lobster Claw), I actually said out-loud, "What a lovely curated collection of crustacean." {Yikes!}

happy summer wishes

xo
elyse