My Way (Homemade Gift Ideas)

Member Name: raehippychick

Product:	Homemade Gift Ideas
Date:	12/05/05 (8424 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fun, cheap, appreciated

Disadvantages: takes time, need room to store stuff

To really get into creating homemade gifts you need to use your imagination, plan ahead and have room to save everything that you might normally throw away

Over the years I have suffered from extreme skintness, especially when I was a single parent student. I got into the habit of never throwing anything away and instead of spending money on presents I would spend time and effort. Sources of free things are various – I look at all the packaging from my shopping, if friends or family get flowers I have been known to beg the bows and cellophane from them. Just let your imagination run wild!

Some of the things I would recommend hoarding are:
~ Unusual or attractive material
~ Wrapping paper
~ Cards
~ Packaging – anything shiny or coloured is good – for example Quality Street wrappings made great decorations to go on presents – scrunched up and stuck together they can look like a shiny flower or bow
~ Interestingly shaped boxes – not only are these handy for wrapping presents but if you have young children they can have great fun making all sorts of weird and wonderful creations with some old boxes, paint and glue

If you have very young children to buy for consider making toys for them. Babies love different textures and colours and are not too fussed about something being in fashion or the latest thing. Make sure the fabric you use is clean and for very young chewy babies, not likely to shed and choke them. Department stores have a good selection of safety eyes, bells, stuffing etc that can be incorporated into toys. For my son’s first Christmas I used a black synthetic velvet skirt to make all my his friends a spider with a bell in and googly eyes – it turned out to be far more popular than all the fancy toys they got that year as the legs were easy to grasp, the eyes made them giggle and when they shook it a bell tinkled. To be honest it looked really naff but the kids were happy! Do make sure that your sewing is strong; you don’t really want your lovingly constructed toy to explode at the seams and choke the poor child at the first chew – use a sewing machine and make sure all eyes etc are safety approved

Old clothes are superb source for creating all kinds of things. One of my favourite presents to my sister was a travel wrap. I cut up two skirts of contrasting colours into rectangles, stitched them together with varying sized pockets along the lower edge and a flap across the top. The whole thing wrapped up to be tied with a strong ribbon. Inside I put a travel toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, some travel wash for clothes, plasters, insect repellent spray, sunblock, lip salve, Savlon cream and of course, since she was a student a packet of three!

Material remnants can be found very cheaply from many places; I picked up a great selection in John Lewis last month and made a collection of cushion covers. The bag of material was colour coordinated and I bought some piping cord and trimmings cheaply and for under a tenner made five cushion covers. If you aren’t any good at piping it doesn’t matter as I only piped two of the cushions and they all looked fine and were given to an aunt who now has them in pride of place in her lounge. This is a cheap and easy present to give someone whose colour scheme you know.

Patchwork is a brilliant way of utilising odds and ends of materials. Either get some remnants or collect any material you can; your own old clothes, browse charity shops and jumble sales, beg from friends and relatives when they have clearing out sessions and make sure the fabric is all clean and pressed. You can either make templates from card or if you are sewing challenged (or lazy like me!) cut the fabric into random shapes to make crazy patchwork. When I was a teenager Laura Ashley had some extremely cheap offcuts in odd shapes and I bought a large bag and, using the zigzag function on my sewing machine sewed all the pieces onto a single sheet. The result was a fabulously bright funky quilt that my best friend uses to this day

Baskets and boxes can be filled with smellies, homemade sweets or tiny cheap fun gifts. Discount stores are a perfect place to pick up cheap baskets of all styles, shapes and sizes. The trick is in the presentation. Get a basket or box and partly fill it with shredded tissue paper (shred your own that you saved in your stash to save even more money!) or scrunched foil or wrapping paper. If you are giving bath products you could line the basket with a cheap flannel; discount stores sell these for pennies so you could even splash out and buy two or three in different shades. Arrange your chosen items then cover the whole with cellophane or cling film and top off with a bow or ribbons. A friend of mine was a teacher for many years and each Christmas and on the last day of the school year she came back laden with a box of assorted bath products which she could not use as she had very sensitive skin. We would recycle these gifts by opening everything and making up goodie baskets as gifts for neighbours or other friends

Another popular gift I have given over the years is homemade vouchers. Think about what you are good at and then get a piece of paper and either using the PC or by hand create an attractive voucher offering a service. Last year I made a voucher for my mum with photos of all the family and the offer of a day’s personal shopping for clothes and a small amount of money that I would contribute to her new clothes. In the past I have made vouchers for babysitting services, cleaning, car washing, gardening, dressmaking, sewing of curtains. Vouchers are really great for kids to give – children enjoy making artistic designs and can then give a really meaningful gift to grandparents, aunts and uncles – an offer to babysit, wash the car, weed a flowerbed, all these go down so well as people will appreciate the time and thought that has gone into the gift. If you and your partner are raising a young family and money is tight why not spend what you have on the children and give each other vouchers? A promise to bring tea in bed each day for month, do the washing up, to babysit so that the other can go out with friends, all these types of offers cost nothing but written down prettily (and the promise kept of course!) will be appreciated and last for a long time. Basically anything that can be considered a chore is a great thing to offer on a voucher

So go on go for it; get creative – at Christmas and birthdays, weddings and anniversaries, Easter, Hallowe’en, all year round… your friends and family will love you!

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