I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: the best gifts are the gifts that you can make by hand, and thankfully, there are some fun DIY gift ideas in this post!
While I’d love to say that I’ve been super busy making my own DIY gifts, I’m just as behind as you probably are for the holiday season!
I started thinking about all the craft projects I have done that would make great gifts this season, and decided to pull them together into one post!
If you still need ideas after this, then….well…..you might just need to buy something from the retail store. HA!
Click here to PIN this post.
10 DIY Gifts Ideas
(That Won’t Cost a Lot of Time or Money!)
1. Stuff Small Trinkets in a DIY Gift Box
These instructions will show you how to make a small DIY gift box with just two pieces of 12″x 12″ scrapbook paper!
The coolest thing is all the goodies you can put inside of it!
Fresh baked cookies (line it with wax paper first)
These pretty glass snowflake ornaments from Amazon (love these!)
Jewelry
Favorite candies
DIY tree ornaments
Gift cards to their favorite stores (read about buying cheap gift cards here)
Nail polishes, make-ups
Small packs of LEGOS
2. Make a DIY Gift Basket
One of my favorite ideas is to make a DIY gift basket for a gift! I made a gift basket for a friend once and stuffed it with all of her favorite crafting supplies!
Find an old basket at the thrift store (there are tons of them!), paint it and add funny or inspirational quotes (or holiday-themed).
I even made a little knitting kit for my niece one year, by upcycling an old wine box into a knitting kit for her!
3. Make a DIY Pamper Set
This is one of my favorite DIY gift ideas because it’s so easy and it looks so pretty!
First, you start with some glass containers like this from the craft store.
Then you make some DIY face scrubs and put them in the decorated jars, like this DIY face scrub recipe:
1 cup organic sugar
3-4 Tbs of coconut oil
few drops of the Grapefruit Essential Oil
Vanilla (couple drops)
And don’t forget the DIY foot scrubber! Just wrap some pretty paint chips around a sanding block from the hardware store and you’ve got an instant foot scrubber for crusty feet! (YUCK! lol).
Just add it with the homemade face (or feet!) scrubs for a cute gift idea!
4. Make a Big DIY Whiteboard
This is a favorite of mine because it’s soooo easy! I did a DIY whiteboard for my mom’s 60th birthday and she loved it! It makes a great gift idea because people are always trying to get organized. And you can decorate it however you like. I stained my mom’s DIY whiteboard, but I painted mine pink for my basement office! You could even write a special message on the back to make it even more personalized!
Click here to get the full instructions on how to make a DIY whiteboard.
5. Make a DIY Tablet Holder
One of my blogger friends keeps asking me to make a DIY tablet holder for her wall, too. LOL. I’m thinking I need to make one and just surprise her (hope she’s not reading this!). They’re really easy to make as long as you have a jigsaw or some way of cutting 4 pieces of wood. But you could even make one out of picture frames, like one of my readers did!
I put mine in my laundry room because the piles of laundry get so high, I need a way to keep it up where I can see it (and out of the way of laundry)!
If you’ve got an idea of the size tablet they have, or you can sneak their measurements, this would be a great gift for their kitchen or other areas where they don’t want the tablet sitting on counters where it can get in the way or fall over!
6. Etched Glass Gift Ideas
Etching glass is suuuuuper easy. All you need are etching glass stencils (like this on Amazon) and some etching creme.
You can etch so many cool DIY gifts:
Fish bowls from the thrift store, turned into candle holders.
Old windows
8″x10″ panes of glass from Home Depot, etched with poems, inspirational words, funny quotes, then frame them.
You can also make your own stencils like I did, using a Silhouette Cameo personal cutting machine (one of my favorite craft tools!).
7. DIY Candle Holders
Everyone loves candles, right?? I had turned some ceiling fan lights into DIY candle holders, and while you don’t have to craft a platform like I did, you could easily hot glue the ceiling fan lights to a wooden board (paint it and decorate it first!) and wrap something pretty around the base. Just make sure that you have a way to catch the candle wax.
8. Frame a Pretty Poem
While you don’t have to be Robert Frost (LOL), you can easily write a personal poem, or print out one of your favorites on quality stock paper with a fancy font and put it into a pretty frame (or even a frame that you’ve decorated).
Here’s a poem I wrote for my mom for Mother’s Day one year and put it in fancy font, with a thrifted frame.
While this was for Mother’s Day, you could easily do this for Christmas, Hanukkah, or any other traditional holiday!
And let’s not forget that not just poems can be framed (don’t forget shadow boxes!), but any one of these things:
Old letters
Postcards
Pictures you take of your family for a DIY photo shoot. Just throw up black cloth as a backdrop and they instantly look professional!
Pretty fabrics
Objects you can’t part with: old house keys, special baby clothes, etc.
Pretty papers (I love Paper Source’s fine papers, most in 20″x28″. Their papers are what I used for my ugly lamp makeover. Lots of great selections!)
Wallpapers with awesome designs
9. DIY Send “Coupons”
This idea is always a favorite!! My mom has been doing this for years, and I’ve started doing it, too.
The idea is that you give your friends and family “coupons” for gifts!
Everything from:
Spending the afternoon together
Girls Night Out
Helping to clean something
Get Out of Housework
Watch a Movie Together
You can use this Send a Coupon site to create one just like this. They’re not pretty (since they’re all gray), but it makes it easy to create, and you can pretty them up in some way with gluing them to pretty paper and stuff! Maybe even laminate them, too! Fun idea!!
10. Make a No-Sew Pillow
If you don’t sew, don’t worry! One of my most popular projects are these no-sew pillows using Heat ‘n Bond tape that allows you to iron together the fabric with fusible tape.
You could use anything to make the no-sew pillows:
Favorite T-shirts you can’t wear anymore but don’t want to throw away.
Sweaters or shirts from the thrift store.
Drop cloth from the home improvement store, and then stencil them.
Bedsheets, and then stencil them.
Any fabric with family pictures heat-transferred on to them.
Get the tutorial for no-sew pillows here.
BONUS DIY Gift Idea…..
Make a DIY Journal
One of my favorites, too, is to make a DIY journal with the person’s name wood burned into the front! They’re great for:
Sketch books
Recipes
Menus
Photo albums
“To Do” lists
Calendars
And more!
These are just some of my favorite DIY gift ideas! What are some of the best DIY gifts you’ve ever received? Leave a comment below and share your ideas with everyone! Remember to PIN THIS post to share it with your friends!
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