Gift for DC (8 and 10) to make GPs

[MegBusset]

Looking for ideas for crafty gifts that the DC can make to give their grandparents. In previous years we've made:

Glass jar tea light holders
Painted stones to use as paperweights
Chocolate bark

They are 8 & 10 so a bit past the painted hand/footprint stage, they like drawing / painting / glueing stuff, not very handy at sewing or anything too fiddly!

Do the grandparents like to cook? DD once did aprons. We bought 100% cotton ones in white and fabric paint. DD was a bit younger but if your DCs like to paint they could come up with some graphic design or a pattern.

Mugs? Either you have one of these pottery painting places near you or Baker Ross does a set of 4 mugs you can paint/decorate with certain pens and then bake it in the oven yourself. We did these as well for my in-laws, DD even did two Christmas mugs for me, one I have in the office during December.

Other things are coasters and bowls for sweets or fruit, again DD did these at a pottery painting place.

I'm thinking of trying to paint candles (Tiger for paint, ikea for candles) with Christmassy scenes.

We've made houses from small boxes by cutting off one end at an angle and fitting it back in as a roof. They painted them and put the coloured cellophane from quality street wrappers into the windows, and a battery operated tealight inside. We filled them with cookies or fudge so they were a gift box too.

We did fabric painted tote bags one year using the cotton bags aldi have at their tills.

Barnardos did a paint-your-own bauble kit last year with nice ceramic balls. They might have something similar this year?

You could do snow globes in pretty jars (google for instructions, I think you need glycerine in the water to slow the glitter down)

Orange and clove pomanders might be good if they have the patience (I recommend either using a thimble to protect fingers or something like a flower nail to make the holes), or with similar levels of patience a sweet tree using a polystyrene ball, cocktail sticks and sweets.

What about deco-patch? Decorated sheets of thin tissue paper that you stick (with that awesome modge podge glue stuff) onto plain cardboard items - we've done photo frames, tree decorations, little boxes... very easy to do, look good and almost impossible to mess up!
You can get all the stuff from craft shops - you dont even need the deco-patch branded papers as tissue paper works fine.

Muffins in a jar? With decorated recipe?
You layer the ingredients so it looks pretty.

Wilkinson' sell t-shirt transfers that you put in your printer and print a scanned image or photo etc. Then iron onto fabric! Only £3 for 5 A4 sheets!!

Last year we made our own bars of soap (bought a soap kit from Amazon) and made them into flannel reindeer. Everyone really loved them.
They were similar to this photo.

We did a good one - box of After Eights, with tiny notes written and slipped inside the wrappers with nice messages/anecdotes/drawings etc.

When they choose a chocolate they get a nice surprise e.g "we love it when you cook us pancakes - thank you"

Then decorate the box and label it "A daily treat" or whatever.

Would also work with other chocolates if you chose square ones you can wrap in the message like those tiny Dairy Milk bars?

Ah there are lots of lovely ideas here, thank you!

No Squirrels I'm going to steal that lovely idea!