Homemade gifts cheaper and thoughtful DIY choice
Lots of people are feeling the pinch this year, but that doesn’t mean Christmas gifts have to be off the cards – there are plenty of DIY gifts you can pull together from items you have already got lying around at home, or materials that are cheap to buy.
Homemade gifts aren’t just cheaper to give, but more thoughtful and better for the environment too.
Make a personalised candle
Once you’ve got the hang of candle-making, you’ll never want to buy one again. For this gift, you just need a handful of materials, including wax and a wick. For a container, you can clean out and repurpose any old jar. There are several tutorials on making Christmas candles at shelterness.com, while if you can’t get a hold of the materials you need to make your own candle, you could instead jazz up or personalise a shop-bought candle with ribbons, paint, card or glitter.
Home-made jam or marmalade
Jam is a cheap, easy and extremely tasty gift to make. There’s a flexible jam recipe at bbcgoodfood.com which requires just three ingredients. You can decant the jam into any leftover, cleanedout jars which you can again decorate as you wish. You may want to add a label detailing ingredients and bestbefore date. If your loved one is more a marmalade fan, you can find another three-ingredient recipe for Seville marmalade at the same website.
Give the gift of a fun afternoon baking
For the baking enthusiasts in your life, bake-in-a-jar gifts are a cheap and cheerful idea guaranteed to be a hit. The idea is that you measure out all the dry ingredients for baked goods – brownies, cake, fudge – in a large mason jar and attach instructions for easy baking. The BBC has a recipe for brownies in a jar, while you can find the ingredients for cookies in a jar at sallysbakingaddiction.com
Make your own bath salts or bath bombs
Forget pricey upmarket bath products, there are a huge variety of bathroom goodies you can make at home as a gift. You could try making a three-ingredient citrus scrub with aliceandlois.com, or craft your own bath bombs using leftover yoghurt pots as moulds – see bbcgoodfood.com. Alternatively, you could try at making some bath salts, with a recipe for lavender bath salts at soapqueen.com
Craft homemade soap Rarely has soap ever featured so prominently in our lives as in 2020, so we might as well embrace it. There are dozens of different recipes for soap online which only require a few ingredients.
Flavoured alcohol
If you want to gift something more personal than a bottle of wine, why not infuse a bottle of gin or vodka with something special instead? There are several recipes for infused vodka at goodhousekeeping.com, while the BBC has an array of booze-related gift ideas
Give the gift of Christmas in a jar
For an alcohol-related gift with a Christmassy twist, put mulling spices in a mason jar and gift it along with a cheap bottle of red for your loved one to mull their own wine at home. There’s a tutorial on putting the mason jar together atnestofposies-blog.com
Infused oils
For something a little cheaper, or as a gift for someone who doesn’t drink, you could try infusing cooking oils instead. From chilli to garlic or thyme, there are myriad ways in which you can infuse oil, all with delicious results. Find a basic tutorial at farmdrop.com
Dip-dyed canvas bag
Instead of just gifting a plain tote bag, add a touch of personalisation with some dye using the dip-dyed canvas bag tutorial at hisugarplum.com – you could also try tie-dying.