It’s a special day; it’s your anniversary perhaps, so you want to give your boyfriend something really romantic. You walk-in to a store, search every shelf and get yourself disappointed; either the item is too pricey or it simply can’t fit to the message you want to send. If that’s the case, it’s time for you to put-on your thinking cap and create by yourself the best gift your boyfriend would ever receive!

By making your own gifts you get to customize and personalize everything. Moreover, romantic gift crafts are inexpensive and it lets you explore the creativeness in you. The personal touch you give your crafts will transcend beyond the actual gift, it exudes how much you value or you care for your partner, how much you remember or cherish your moments together. These are the things that make your gift unique, and special, and more appreciable.

Developing gift ideas requires you to look into and out your relationship.  The gift should contain his identity, his memories, and his personality both as an individual and as your lover. In other words, the gift should represent him to you, how you see him through your eyes. Your options are limitless! You can make a scrapbook or a card, a bookmark even. If you can knit, make him a sweater, or if you can draw or paint, make him a portrait. If you can write poems, make one and write about piquant memories: things you shared, like funny moments, problems encountered, joy and grief. All you need is your utmost desire to please him with your gift, and that alone will guide you in choosing which gift best suits your boyfriend.

To stir-up your imagination, let me share some of the gifts I made myself:

• A compilation entitled 143 Reasons Why I Love You. For your version, you can either list from as few as three to hundreds which talk about the reasons why he is funny, or the reasons why you are happy with him, or the reasons why you’d marry him, your choice. To add more romance to the craft, you can write these reasons on a parchment paper either individually or as a list, and roll it inside a bottle. Voila! Bottled love. Or if bottles don’t work for you, improvise on writing the reason on small cards, all neatly stacked in a small box.

• A scrapbook containing tickets from our first bus ride together, our first movie together, even the official receipt from the restaurant where we had our first date (ah yes! I kept them all).  I even included dried flowers and some old love letters from him. In some of the pages in the scrapbook I have pasted photos and captioned them with the best romantic chatters my boyfriend told me like “Loving you is Freedom”, or “You are the destination I have always wanted to reach”. Your scrapbook could actually contain just about everything and anything! Don’t limit your imagination.

• And this is funny. I gave him underwear with my name printed on it! I printed it myself. I bought a small textile paint bottle and painted a jockey brief with my name. When I gave him the underwear, he was beaming with joy. =)

The best with hand-crafted gifts is its originality, the mere fact that you created them by yourself, the fact that you have actually spent much energy to create it, to make your man happy. These are the gifts that touch the heart and are valued for a long time, if not a lifetime.