Emmy's Gender Reveal: The Crafty Details

We had a gender reveal party when we were pregnant with Fisher which was so much fun and a great memory that I cherish. For baby #2 I wanted create an equally wonderful memory without having to host a party. This time around we opted to just include our immediate family (parents & siblings) in the gender reveal fun. 

Brent and I teamed up for some killer crafty creativeness to make a great gender (& name) reveal package for our loved ones (in my unbiased opinion, of course). Since we knew it'd be impossible to get all of our family together we wanted to create a gender reveal package that we could send via mail. Brent came up the idea of sending a puzzle and I ran with it. 

For this inexpensive, but perfectly personalized project, we purchased:

• 10 24-piece puzzles from the Target Dollar Spot (We needed 5 puzzles, but went ahead and prepped a puzzle for both a boy and a girl so we could mail them out ASAP.)
• 2 Cans of Spray Paint - 1 Pink, 1 Blue
• Clear Cellophane bags
• 2 Rolls of Ribbon - 1 Pink, 1 Blue
• Small Kraft Paper Tags 
• Kraft Paper Note Cards
• 2 Rubber Stamps - a Bow & a Truck (both at 40% off at Michaels)
• White Stamp Ink Pad
• 2 Marker Pens - 1 Pink, 1 Blue

Step 1 involved opening all the puzzle boxes, separating out the pieces on some scrap cardboard outside and spray painting everything. We needed 5 blue puzzle sets and 5 pink puzzle sets. Strangely enough, the light blue paint covered the puzzle really well, but the bright pink still allowed the original puzzle image to show through. Brent later painted an additional coat on the pink puzzles with a lighter pink spray paint for me. They came out looking much better and the pale pink was ultimately a sweeter look.

Step 2 was the super fun part where Brent and I had to put all 10 puzzles together with no image to help us along the way. Luckily these were only 24 pieces (and made for children). I'm sure we would have cracked under the pressure of a larger puzzle. 

Once all the puzzles were assembled, it was on to Step 3: Painting the baby's name onto the puzzles. Unfortunately, this part was all up to me to complete. I had hoped that a simple paint pen would do the trick, but I had issues getting it to adhere to the spray painted surface. Ultimately I had to paint all puzzles by hand with a small brush and white acrylic paint. It was much, much more time consuming, but the final look was dramatically better than the paint pen efforts. 

After the puzzles pieces were dry, I tossed them into little cellophane gift bags, tied them up with both blue and pink ribbon and added a little Kraft paper gift tag (Step 4). Yep, it looked adorable. The idea was for our family to know right away whether we were having a boy or a girl based on the color of the puzzle pieces, but they would still have to assemble to puzzle to find out the baby's name.

Step 5 involved creating the card that would accompany the puzzle and give directions to our family. I just used Kraft paper note cards that had raised polka-dots on the front and added a little white truck stamp to the front for the boy cards and a sweet white bow for the girl ones. Inside was a playful poem that Brent created for the occasion. (That was one of my favorite elements!)

Here's the boy version that did not get sent out:

"It happened again! Robin and Brent had some sex! Once again Brent gave Robin a Y instead of an X! We're having a boy! Trucks and video games! Put the puzzle together and you'll learn his name."

And here's the girl version that our family received: 

"It happened again! Robin and Brent had some sex! But this time instead of a Y, Brent gave Robin an X! We're having a girl! Dresses and bows! Put the pieces together and her name you will know!"

We love how everything turned out and how stinking fun were those poems?! I just love that my hubby can jump into my crafts with such commitment. He really is the best. 

So as you can see, our baby girl's name is Emmy Josephine. Her middle name is Brent's grandmother's middle name (Emmy's great-grandmother) which makes it very special. I love that we were able to incorporate a family name since Fisher (Neil Fisher) is named after my grandfather, his great-grandfather. 

As the final step of our gender reveal, I asked our families to take photos of their puzzles once they received them and here's the shots we got back:

Aunt Kelsey & Uncle Alex were so excited they took a pre-puzzle photo! 

Momma C couldn't even wait to get inside. She put the puzzle together on the car seat while sitting the driveway. That's probably why she didn't bother to get in the photo. Too funny. 

Gran & Pap

Uncle John

Aunt Liz

Aunt Heather & Uncle Kelly

So much fun! We loved sending these gender reveal packages out and getting the family reactions one-by-one. (I even loved watching Facebook friends suffer through waiting to get the word on girl or boy. Ha!)

What do you guys think? Would you ever do a project like this?

Until next time...