Hi, I’m Kristen! I made this gift for my sister to share my love for the Magnolia Parks books by Jessa Hastings! The book community is so fun and they really know how to hype a woman up. So, with that no gatekeeping attitude, I wanted to share how I made this book gift box for my sister!

So, this book box has 6 different elements in it! Plus a bonus thing I snuck in last min.

• Vibe Photos

• Mini Poster Prints

• My Fan Cast

• The Bookmark

• The MPU Closet Booklet

• An Annotated Book of Magnolia Parks

• BONUS: A Henry Friendship Bracelet 💙

I think it’s important to mention that I already had many of these things around the house from other crafty projects. I highly recommend getting creative and repurposing things because these projects can really add up if you’re not careful!

Vibe Photos

You know those TikTok’s “convincing you to read XYZ by the vibes”?? That was the job of these polaroids! Simply to just set the ✨vibe✨ for the book. I got all of these photos off of Pinterest!

Printed on an Instax Square Printer! I also love using Instax polaroids as bookmarks.

Mini Poster Prints

I downloaded these poster prints from Etsy! The Etsy shop (AspenPrintCo) has several Magnolia Parks quotes. The red print in the photo is from PnklmndCo.

I resized the poster prints to be smaller, and printed them all on a 8.5 x 11” photo paper (I have Epson Luster Professional Photo Paper on-hand because of my job, but honestly any brand of photo paper will do!) I cut the poster prints to size and put them all inside one of my husband’s baseball card sleeves.

My Fan Cast

Okay, this was honestly one of my favorite parts! I sourced Pinterest on who I envisioned as the characters in the book. I find it kinda funny that these strangers have no clue I have their photos cast as some characters in a fiction book. 😂 You can view my full box set of characters here on Pinterest!

I printed these on my Instax Mini Link 2 Printer and wrote their character names with sharpie on the bottom.

The Bookmark

The Etsy shop abbitbusyreading has the cutest bookmarks for the Magnolia Parks Series! I ordered a set of 4 with rounded corners and tassels. I put the bookmark for the first book inside the gift box and kept the other 3 for my personal collection!

The MPU Closet Booklet

I don’t fully know how to explain the MPU Closet Instagram account to someone when I recommend this book to them…. Like is it necessary to the book? No, absolutely not; however, it SO fun to see visually what Jessa Hastings is writing!

Within the last year, my sister removed the IG app off her phone, so I knew looking at the IG account wasn’t fully going to be an option for her, which lead me to the idea of printing it out in this cute DIY booklet!

This booklet was created using InDesign and a ton of copying and pasting! 💀 I would screenshot the images on my computer from The MPU Closet’s Instagram account, add them to the template I made, then copy and paste the quote, who wore it, what chapter, and the item description.

I chose InDesign for the project because I knew for how I personally needed to print it I didn’t have a home printer that prints front and back…I literally can’t think what that’s called right now, soooo the term “front and back” will have to do….but I tried to make it as easy as possible for me because it’s a ton of pages to print — 77 pages to be exact! I knew, from my graphic design college class, that when printing in InDesign you can print by even and odd pages. Which means I could print all the odd pages first flip the sheets of paper around and print all the even number of pages.

With that said, InDesign isn’t a super accessible program to share the original template, but I figured I could share the PDF of the design file with you ↴

Download the MPU Book Design File

It’s design space is 4.25 inches x 5.5 inches, and I used these flat A2 Postcards from Hobby Lobby. (This is a 25 pack, so you would need 2 of them for the project).

There were pros and cons to using this particular paper though, I LOVED how thick it was, but the images didn’t print ✨amazingly✨. Which isn’t a huge deal because this was a gift I was giving, and not a product I was selling. I could have tested different types of paper to see if the quality would come out better. But for me, I had this card stock already around the house, so it was easy to make use of it and sacrifice my “everything has to be perfect” standards. 🤪

Also, can we take a moment to admire the COVER ART which you can find in the Instagram Highlights of Carmen!? She has 5 doodles of the MPU series and they are just SO STINKIN’ GOOD!!

Once I had the pages printed, front and back, I took a hole punch to the corner, and added a binder ring to hold it together. I like the binder ring method because she could easily keep it at the chapter she is on without needing to open and close it and try to remember where she left off.

I really loved the way this turned out! It was a labor-of-love to put together, but honestly, the MPU Closet IG account did the heavy lifting of putting the content together!

An Annotated Book of the First Magnolia Parks

I’m not a huge annotator in my everyday reading experience. I don’t do it for every book I read, and to be honest, I prob wouldn’t do this on my first read through of any book. With this book my approach was to do a mix of highlighting and underlining of parts that just gave me the awww feels, poetic moments, the times where the family dinner scenes read like a sitcom, the OMG! - UGH! - and STOP BEING A JERK, BJ! moments. You know when you’re watching a show or reading a book that someone has already seen (or read) and you live text them through it? Well, that’s how me and my sister are, so that was my mindset when annotating the book. I didn’t add tabs to it, because it felt like it would be a hindrance to my sister’s reading experience of the book. So, my thoughts are just sprinkled in throughout the book for her to discover as she reads.

A Henry Friendship Bracelet 💙

Who doesn’t LOVE Henry!?! I had left over bead supplies from the Era’s Tour friendship bracelets, so this felt really fitting to add a friendship bracelet for Hen. I wish I had red beads to go along with the red theme of the first book. But, say it with me…WE USE WHAT WE HAVE and I had blue beads, so the bracelet was blue.

Annnnnnd that’s it folks! I hope this inspires you to gift books to friends or family in fun and creative ways! I’ve always been someone who loves to give thoughtful, creative, crafty, gifts. I love working with my hands and making the reading experience come alive for others.

Remember - don’t feel like you need to go out and buy supplies to do projects like this, especially if you feel like it’s going to be a one time thing! If you like the idea of including polaroids, but you don’t have a Instax printer, and you don’t see yourself using it, there are Etsy shops where people will literally print Instax prints for you and mail them. Don’t have a great printer at home? Use Office Depot, Staples, Fedex Office to print (If you’re in the US). They have great paper options you can choose from. The key is to start with a book and think what could you add that would be a fun and enhance the reading experience?

Stay creative ✨
-Kristen