Sentimental Birthday Gifts for Your Best Friend

Your best friend already knows you love them, but a birthday is the day to say it properly. The most sentimental birthday gifts for a best friend are made from your shared history: the places, the jokes and the years only the two of you were there for. Here are 12 ideas, most of them low in cost and high in meaning. Our top pick is a song about your friendship, because it turns years of inside jokes into something they can keep.

Hear a song made with Songbond

This one was made for another family. Yours would carry their name and your stories.

12 sentimental birthday gift ideas for your best friend

1. A song about your friendship ($39.90). Share how you met, the nickname you use for each other and the night you still laugh about. Songbond turns it into an original song, ready within 24 hours. If you want something for the wall too, a printed keepsake plaque of the song is available.
2. A friendship timeline scrapbook. One page for every year you have known each other, with a photo and a line about what was going on. Usually $30 to $60 in supplies or printing.
3. Open-when letters. A bundle of sealed envelopes marked open when you need a laugh, open when you get the job, open when you miss me. Free, and they get opened for years.
4. A shadow box of your adventures. Ticket stubs, a festival wristband and the menu from your first trip, arranged behind glass. About $40 to $80 for the frame.
5. A custom illustration of the two of you. Drawn from a favorite photo by an independent artist. Usually $50 to $150.
6. A map print of the town where you met. Mark the school, the dorm or the office where it all started. Usually $40 to $90.
7. Matching bracelets. Simple, grown-up pieces you will both actually wear, perhaps engraved with the year you met. Around $30 to $120 for a pair.
8. A candle that smells like a place you shared. Beach, pine forest or the cabin you rented every summer. Name it after the memory. About $30 to $60.
9. A cutting from your own plant. Pot a piece of the plant on your windowsill so a little of your home lives in theirs. Under $40 with a good pot.
10. A repeat of your first trip together. Same town, same diner, same questionable motel if it is still standing.
11. A handwritten letter about the day you met. What you first thought of them, and how wrong or right you turned out to be. Free.
12. A birthday tradition that starts this year. The same breakfast spot or the same walk, every birthday from now on. The first one is the gift.

How to choose a sentimental gift

Sentimental does not have to mean expensive. It means the gift could only have come from you. Start with the part of your friendship that matters most to both of you.

• If they are a keeper of memories: the scrapbook, the shadow box or the song.
• If they are far away: the open-when letters, the plant cutting or the candle.
• If they are not a things person: the trip, the tradition or the letter.

What makes a friendship song feel like them

The details that make a song land are small and specific: a nickname, a habit, a line the two of you have repeated for years. Words like loving, kind and thoughtful describe almost everyone and make a weak song. Words like big heart, loves animals or big feelings show up far less and make a song feel like one person. So before you order, write down three things only you would know. The worst haircut. The song they always pick at karaoke. What they said the night everything went wrong. Those are the lines they will play twice.

Make a birthday song for your best friend

Create a birthday song for your best friend. Tell us your story, and the song is ready within 24 hours. If the birthday is today, express delivery gets it to you in about an hour.

Also in the Journal: a thank-you song for a friend and songs for your chosen family.