🎁 $20, low skill DIY, in 30 minutes

Your 1-minute-a-week shortcut to
always having awesome gift ideas well in advance.

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This is Better Gift Coach, where, if you stick with us every week, all signs point to you saving time on brainstorming and giving some pretty awesome gifts this year.

Has anyone else received/given gifts that offer nostalgia for a past home (or other cherished location)? Simply reply to this email and it’ll get directly to me. For everyone’s enjoyment, we’ll share some of your answers in a future email.

Let’s start off with a dad joke…Why is nostalgia like grammar? (See the PS for the answer)

Estimated read time: 2 minutes & 11 seconds

The “street signs" Gift

Have you ever received or given a gift similar to this one ~ or ~ want to share a completely unrelated story about an awesome gift? I'd be so excited to read them (and potentially share them with the community). Please simply reply to this email and it'll go directly to me!

• Nostalgic, creative, personalized, unique…all around awesome

Need a reminder of the power of nostalgia? 

Ever smelled an email before? 

Tags to find similar stories: less than $20, virtual, housewarming, group, last-minute, tradition, wedding, anniversary

Adaptations:

• Recreate physical street signs

• Consider watercolor versions of your photos

• Instead of street signs, could also make a photo collage of mailboxes, street addresses, house photos, etc.

 Potential Occasions:

• Holiday/birthday

• Housewarming (or moving away)

• Valentine’s Day gift idea = photo collage of all the streets you’ve lived on as a couple (also great anniversary gift)

Non-DIY Route:

• Provide photos to editing pros via Fiverr ($10+) or Etsy ($15+)

• Find photographers anywhere to anywhere via Thumbtack or even Craigslist

DIY this gift, for ~$20, in 30 minutes, without leaving your computer! I have almost no digital art skills and I created the below collage in 32 minutes. See below for how I did it.

Playbook for DIY:

1. Use Google Maps street view (explainer video) to find images of street signs

2. Screen shot each image

3. Use a photo editor to crop & arrange the images and to turn them black & white. As a photo editing novice, I used PowerPoint to crop & arranged the images into a collage, saved the collage as a picture, uploaded it to photopea.com (free, no login) and made it black & white (instructions)

4. Print & frame (could do for ~$20)

• Who on your gift shopping list is nostalgic?____

• Anyone getting a gift for someone who has lived in many places

And introduce them to your favorite 1-minute a week shortcut to always having awesome gift ideas well in advance. They can read past editions and subscribe here.

All the best,
Patrick Kucharson
Better Gift Coach™

P.S. Why is nostalgia like grammar? We find the present tense and the past perfect

Want more? Here's a few of our past popular posts:🎁 Love It or List It or Frame It🎁 I stole from your mom, not sorry🎁 She listened, now I don’t chew my smoothies