Secret Santa Gift Exchange

Today was our office gift exchange. One of my most favorite of our holiday traditions here at Unboundary. We do a killer breakfast followed by the gift-giving. This year our creative director came dressed as Santa Claus (pix of him with full white beard drinking a mimosa through a straw was well worth it!). And so he gave out the gifts. Then we take turns opening them so that we can give full attention to the gift.

Our gifts can be either homemade or store-bought, but as you can imagine . . . working at a design firm unleashes all sorts of creativity in Santa's workshop. There were all sorts of homemades: a wall calendar, a knitted hat and scarf, a sun jar, ornaments of all kinds, an office makeover!!, a Christmas tree skirt, a gourd birdfeeder, an Irish whiskey drink, magnets, jewelry, Christmas garland (which I got; picture to come!).

I chose Devon's name and made her these journals out of those standard issue black and white composition books. Devon is one of our writers. She loves to travel and read and, of course, write. She loves National Geographic and so I got some vintage NG maps from ebay which I adhered to the book. I painted the spines, and then made book marks from ribbon and charms (adhering them to the inside front of each book). The maps correspond to places she's traveled (Africa), where her boyfriend lives (Boston), and her love of the ocean. I had a list of about 30 things which I know she loves and so I found images of all those things, made stickers, and then stuck them randomly throughout each book to serve as inspiration.

It was hands-down one of the most fun craft projects I've ever done!