That is a good idea scripmom. I was worried about putting out gift cards & certs because, unlike an object, like a S'Mores maker, a dishonest somebody could easily make off w/ a gift card & no one would notice right away. I like your idea~it lets you put the card out, be makes it a little harder to pilfer.
We had the same issue. We used large beautiful stars (silver / gold) and taped the card to the middle. Then we put the star on a stick and stuck it styrofoam which was placed in some appropriate object (coffee cup for Starbucks gift card; flower pot for gardening store, etc.)
I did something simialr to Robin's suggestion at our Silet Auction.
I made a tri-fold out of 1/2 a sheet of poster board. On the middle section, I put the logo & what the amount etc. was. Then on each side, I printed out some info about the co.- a portion of the menu, hours, manager name & phone#, history of the co. This is not hard or expensive, but if you gave a lot it does take quite a bit of time~ I had 30 or so & it took me about a month. Of course, if you have some HELP, it wouldn't really take that long.
You could go online and pull off the logos of all those stores/restaurants.. and mount them o colored card stock and hang them on the wall, or stand them up on tables.. or put them in assorted picture frames you have bought at a dollar store. I would not have all the actual gift cards out.. they are like cash and can too easily get stolen.
If you had the time, you could also go to all of those store/restaurants and get their shopping bags, or other freebie logo merchandise they may give out.. you could stuff their bags with tissue, as gift bags, and sticking out of the top, with a $$ dollar about on green cardstock, or use monopoly money to represent the cash value!
You could also try a plastic hat from the dollar store and glue or tape the cards onto the hat (similar to what a lot of groups do with lottery tickets). Your only expense would be the hat. We usually have someone wear the hat as they go around selling the raffle tickets.
