Cheer Coach Gift Idea

First, let me apologize for the photo quality. My family was half a mile out of the neighborhood with these photo album gifts in hand when I realized I had forgotten to photograph them. I persuaded my very punctual husband to return home so his not-so-punctual wife could make the family late for the party just for the sake of her little ol' blog! He's a dear :) I didn't have time for my usual set-up, so I tossed them on the dining table and shot a few quick ones. Hopefully, you'll get the idea!

I volunteered to make keepsake photo albums for the two cheerleading coaches this year to go along with year-end gift cards from the girls and their families. I was hoping to create something inexpensive, yet personal. That way the bulk of the money donated could go toward nicer gift cards, and hopefully the coaches would end up with a more meaningful keepsake than, say, a plaque or other commemorative item.

I started with $2 photo albums that you can find at stores like Michael's, Target, War-Mart, etc. These are the kind that have clear plastic covers with pre-printed inserts. I just replaced those inserts with my own. For the cover, I used the cute MFT Pure Innocence Cheerleader (a PI I had tried to resist, but found was just way too practical NOT to own {grin}) and cased Jen del Muro's awesome cheerleader pyramid idea, which you can see here. I tried to give each girl a unique appearance by varying the hair and skin tones (an interesting exercise, since I mostly just stick with my usual E0000, E000, E11 and R30 combo).


On the inside cover is a cool close-up of the pom-poms that I had taken earlier in the year. I added the dedication message in Photoshop before printing. And on the facing page is a group photo and all the girls' names.

I filled the album pages with photos and "stats" for each girl, thank-you notes they'd written to each coach, and some random pictures I took at the championship game (which our team won - woohoo!). What I love about these albums the most are the girls' notes. They're full of the kinds of superlatives you get at this age ("you're the best cheerleading coach in the whole wide world" type of thing), and the misspellings are adorable ("thank you for being my cerleting koch"). Here's the spread of my daughter, for example (and please ignore her hair - she insisted on doing it all by herself, eek!):

In the end, I was totally second-guessing myself with these and worried they looked a little cheesy. If I do something like this again, I'd love to upgrade the album quality. I saw some at Target that were much nicer. They looked more like mini scrapbook albums, with the hard "cloth"-covered covers, etc, but they didn't match our colors at all, so I opted for the clear plastic ones instead. Anyway, the price was definitely right at under $5 each, including photo printing, albums, and other supplies, and they seemed well-received :)

Thanks for visiting!