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How to Make Your Own Gifts
How to Make Your Own Gifts offers tips, tricks and advice on how to make your own gifts for any occasion. -
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Make Your Own Christmas Gifts
This video highlights two gifts you can make on your own during the Christmas holidays -- tassles and fruit sauce. The video walks you through how to make tassles first, discussing the various uses for them, including Christmas ornaments and accents for Christmas presents. The video then demonstrates how to make fruit sauce, including a holiday flare for storing and presenting the sauce as a gift.
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Introduction
- When it comes to gift-giving, it really is the thought that counts. A homemade gift is far more meaningful (and cheaper) than yet another Starbucks gift card. Making your own gifts requires a little extra effort in the creativity department, but that's why people love them.
Step 1: Budget Your Time
- Do-it-yourself gifts may be easier on your pocketbook than their store-bought brethren, but they do require more time to make. You'll need to set aside time to brainstorm an idea, assemble your supplies and actually make the gift.
- How much time you set aside depends on the type of gift you're making. A batch of cookies might mean one long, weekend afternoon, but knitting a scarf could take weeks or months depending on how fast your fingers fly with those needles. Whatever you decide to make, be sure to give yourself enough time to make the gift at a leisurely pace. Making something for someone should be a pleasurable, not stress-inducing, experience.
Step 2: Brainstorm Gift Ideas
- As you brainstorm homemade gift ideas for your friends and family, keep your time and supply budget in mind. Otherwise, let your imagination run wild.
- Consider Your Talents: Are you an artist, writer or musician? Your talents are gold. Write a poem, sing a song or paint a picture.
- Do Cool Things with Photos: Raid your own or your friend's Flickr page. Print and frame the best shots. Make a cross stitch pattern from them. Create an online scrapbook or comic book.
- Give the Gift of Experience: Your gift doesn't have to be a material object. Consider taking someone on a picnic or a hike. Teach your friends a new dance or some martial arts moves.
- Get Geeky: If you're technically-inclined, check out MAKE Blog's Open Source Gift Guide and retrofit an old gadget for new gimmickry.
- Bake or Knit: You can't go wrong with a lovingly-decorated batch of chocolate chip cookies or crafty classics like knitted scarves and silk-screened t-shirts.
Do-It-Yourself Gift Ideas
- Still having trouble settling on a gift? Here are some DIY gift ideas to get you started:
- Comic Book
- Download a program like Comic Book Creator or Comic Life, and turn your personal photos into a homemade comic book.
- Radio Show CD
- Download a program which records streaming audio from your computer like Total Recorder Standard Edition or MP3 My MP3, and put radio shows like This American Life, the SModcast or NPR's live concert recordings on CDs for friends.
- Recipe Book
- Collect your family recipes or your friends' favorite foods into a homemade recipe book. If you're feeling especially industrious, you can bind the book yourself.
- Embroidery or Cross Stitch
- Get crafty with hip embroidery designs, or turn your own photos into a cross stitch pattern.
- Snow Globes
- Transform your family photos by inserting them into a handmade snow globe.
- Mix CD
- Share your love and your music with the classic mix tape. Choose songs they'll love, and spend some time crafting a memorable cover.
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