Handmade presents that won't go in the bin?

[prezzz]

I'm not working at the moment, so I have more time than money. Christmas and gift-giving is important to me, and I'd love to give people some useful and thoughtful presents that won't bankrupt me. I also love crafting and DIY, but am well aware that a lot of handmade presents can actually be a bit crap.

Is two months too short a time to learn how to crochet or knit something that's actually nice and/or useful? I did a bit of both about ten years ago, so I'm not a complete novice, but definitely still a beginner...

Any other ideas?

I need presents for a range of ages and both for men and women.

Personslised invitation cards designed by you, for tea/ cakes/ coffee with you at a café from a list of suggestions.
Win. Win. Lovely chance to catch up and doesn't break the bank.

Cost it out carefully, and buy supplies in the right order. It’s all very well saying you’ll get pots in the charity shop but they may well not have them. Ditto china teacups for making candles and craft fabrics. Even the time for traipsing about looking, is getting tight.

A lot of the kind of things you might cook or bake as a homemade gift are available to buy as massed produced commercial gifts at a fraction of the cost, that are specifically designed to look charmingly rustic.

Most people are time poor and unskilled (in crafts I mean) and have no concept of the effort and cost, but can buy similar in primark in more fashionable colours for half nothing, so they have no reason to value what you make.

You could also use the cups as containers for home made truffles / fudge ( in cellophane bags)

@ByTwinklyDreamer Id be more forgiving over chocolates but they’d need to be as good as my local chocolatier makes.

Oh wow, thanks for all the replies! I've been out all day but will have a proper read through after dinner... particularly looking forward to the controversial ones... 😂

@Magnificentkitteh

isn’t it obvious? People not washing their hands before touching cake, especially bad if they have just been to toilet or just had their fingers in their gobs or whatever. People coughing or sneezing over cake. Cake being made in house where kitchen surfaces not clean. Cake being made in pet home with lots of dog hair around. Etc etc etc. I would rather eat a cake with some preservatives frankly.

I suppose I've just lived 45 years without ever knowingly succumbing to some cake-borne disease, and I have no real reason to believe my own kitchen's hygiene standards are higher than the average cake-gift-giver. Do you never accept invitations to people's houses where food is served? Just feels an extremely risk averse way to live.

Candle making could be an option or something like a night of babysitting if you have a friend with young kids x

To be honest, I wasn't planning on knitting YOU one, love. You don't seem the kind of person I would choose to knit for. The last person I knitted a hat for loves it and told me she wears it all the time in winter, that it's perfect because she can put it in her coat pocket until she needs it. The person previous to that is a very long standing friend: I chose a colour I knew she would like, and a simple pattern that I knew she would love, because she doesn't like fussy things.
HTH.

Honestly, I’d rather receive a Christmas card, Homemade or otherwise. Maybe print off a nice photo and buy a frame from somewhere like Tkmaxx or Wilko if you really want to give something more. Easy enough for the recipient to pop on the side and no pressure for them to have to make up guilty lies about how much they ‘loved’ anything homemade or crafted.

@prezzz You could learn to crochet something simple like a star and use that to make your own Christmas cards. I did that one year, 40+ of them! I get Facebook memories from people I've not seen for a while saying how they still use them and love them. If you do make them, use spray starch to help them keep their shape.

I try not to think about what might have gone on in the kitchen, especially if children with snotty , bogey fingers have been “helping!”
Some nice ideas here but can end up not being low cost if materials, jars, containers , photo frames sweet and cake boxes etc are factored in.
So much easier if you’re gifted art wise, a water colour or caricature is lovely and unique. I wouldn’t want to give my handmade efforts to anyone, they’re primary school standard! I remember a jewellery box made from a Turkish delight container, and a pencil holder made from a washing bottle, and of course, my mum loved them!

One of my wedding gifts from a friend was making the favours of tablet. Honestly one of the best gifts and everyone loved them.

I’d snatch your hand off if you made me tablet, whether nicely wrapped or just in a tray!

I've made tote bags before, just nicer versions of those calico reusable bags you get everywhere. Sew

I think a reusable tote bag is always useful, you can use upcycled fabric and they are nicer than either plastic bags for life or those calico ones that go grubby. You can put a few treats in. Use the Morsbag pattern for instance.

I've also made a personalised covered journal (A5 hardback notebook) with a fabric slipcover.

But I've knitted, sewed and baked many presents over the years, it rarely saves money unless you already have the materials. And most people would be baffled why you didn't buy the identical (to them) thing from Sainsbury's.

Having said that, I'd get on Pinterest/Instagram and find something pretty and clever, and you could get a little production line going.

I was going to suggest this. You can roll chocolate truffles in different things: icing sugar, cocoa powder, chopped roasted hazelnuts, grated white, milk & dark chocolate flakes, to give them variety and package them nicely.

I know someone who sells homemade scented candles and they're fabulous. I'm pretty sure they'd be universally well received

But then you are saddling the recipient with a cushion that probably isn't to their taste that they can't give away because it's covered in photos and they have to keep our because you'll come round and get upset if you don't see it. It's almost as bad a massive self portrait of you the gift giver and insisting it gets put up over the mantelpiece.

I love this post. People should really pay the OP the courtesy of believing she knows the recipients of her gifts better than a load of randoms online do.

I used to make shortbread and wrap it in lovely cellophane bags or a nice tin, which I got from Boyes or Home Bargains.

Also fudge. I can make proper fudge but you can do the slow cooker chocolate versions quite easily too.

have not yet rtft but a well chosen second hand book works if you haven’t got much )£

I've been crocheting a year, and realistically if you can pick things up fast, like tension, hook size, yarn properties etc you could whack out a few bottle holders, hats etc.

But there's a lot of even very basic stuff that can be hard to master, like counting stitches. Honestly you think you can count then you learn to crochet and suddenly you can't count at all. It really does take repetition.

Then there's time. It's hard on the hands and wrists, and it can get really monotonous.

I start making my Christmas gifts in July just to make sure I've got them all made. I did once speed through a cardigan, entirely in single crochet, in a week. I got a repetitive strain injury in my shoulder afterwards.

Then there's the frogging and starting over if you make a mistake. It can be soul destroying.

On top of that you have to consider that if you paid yourself an hourly wage for the things you were making, the product would potentially cost hundreds, and the recipient might not value the fact you've actually taken the time to learn a skill to create something unique just for them, and it wont get the love and care it deserves. Only ever make gifts for people who can appreciate the craft as well as the product.

Knitting is even more time consuming though is less yarn greedy.

See if you can get your hands on a second hand sentro machine and practice making hats with a machine. From there you can make panels for jumpers as its basically 4 rectangles, but then you'd still need to find a way to make your cuffs.

But don't go into the skill thinking you can make gifts in time for Christmas. It is an extremely difficult task you'd be setting.

My nan does this, and homemade vanilla extract which is just vanilla beans in vodka, in a fancy bottle.

Strawberry jam from strawberries on sale for being at the end of their sell by date too.

We also used to make flower bomb cards when I was young. Basically blitzed up coloured tissue paper, wrung out thoroughly, seeds mixed in, shaped into tiny disks, then we used them as the centre of the flower that we would draw onto the cards, so in the spring they could just be planted.

One year I made a calendar with monthly seeds to sow each year.