I have a teenage friend who is completely hooked on her iPod (aren’t they all?). Her birthday is coming up soon, and the best gift I could think of for her was an iTunes gift card so she can buy more music to listen to. Buying the gift card was easy, but I wanted to come up with an interesting way to package it so that it would still be a fun gift to open. Since the gift card was for music, I wanted the packaging to be related to music, too. I found just the inspiration I was looking for in an old CD jewel case, which I turned into a really fun holder for the card. It was really easy and inexpensive because I used supplies I already had. Here’s how to do it.

The first step, obviously, is to buy your gift card. Then you’ll need to sift through your scrapbook paper stash and find several pieces in coordinating colors that also match the design on the card. Then find an old CD jewel case.

Take the CD jewel case apart and take out all of the paper inserts that were in it. Don’t throw the inserts away yet, though, because they are your templates! Use a paper trimmer or scissors to cut pieces of the decorative paper the same size as the inserts, and make any folds to match.

Then put the new, colorful paper inserts into the empty case, printed side down.

Now, if your your paper is white on the back like mine was, you’ll want to cut another piece of pretty paper for each side and place it on top. Then just snap the CD tray back into the case.

Now grab any CD and trace the outside edge as well as the inner hole onto a piece of patterned paper. Do your drawing on the back so that you don’t have to worry about pencil lines showing. Cut the paper “CD” out with scissors (it helps for the hole if you use really sharp, pointed scissors like Cutter Bees). Place the paper circle onto the CD tray to make sure it fits.

Now you need to attach the gift card to the circle. Because the CD tray has a raised area in the middle (to hold the CD), you can’t just put your gift card right on the paper. Instead, you need to lift it up a little. To do this, cut some small strips of foam mounting tape and stick them on either side of the hole. I used two layers of tape, but if yours is really thick, you might be able to get by with just one. Then take a tiny piece of scrap paper (I used yellow) and stick it on the tape, covering up the sticky surface completely.

Now you’re probably wondering why I just told you to cover up the sticky side of the tape. Well, I’ve learned the hard way that foam mounting tape is REALLY sticky and really hard to remove. You don’t want to mess the gift card up by getting that gunk all over it! Instead, reach for something smaller and more forgiving, like Glue Dots. Just one tiny Glue Dot on each side (they are hard to see in the photo so I pointed them out with arrows) will be enough to hold your card in place. Now grab the gift card and center it on the circle, pushing down to stick it to the Glue Dots. I love how the foam makes appears to float!

If you turn the piece over, you’ll see that we have a nice hollow area that will fit perfectly on the center piece in your CD tray. Pretty cool, huh?

As a final touch, you can go ahead and sign a nice message on the paper insert on the left, and then close the case up. Doesn’t it look so pretty? Who wouldn’t love getting this as a gift?