handmade gifts for guys and gals

Oh, this one's a doozey.
I realized I never posted the gifts we did last year of the Non-Children Variety, so those are thrown in here first.
Let's get right down to business...

Last year we made:

Hospitality Canvas...
I just whipped up a "subway art" type arrangement of one of my favorite verses (another version of which I happen to have hanging in my kitchen), printed it out on iron-on printer paper and then ironed it onto canvas and hung with a ribbon.

(excuse the yellowness in the picture?)




Loved this one.


Jewelry...
I've had jewelry supplies laying around here for years so I thought I'd pull some of it out again. I made a bobbly necklace for my sister with her first initial on it:

 (again, sorry for the bad photo, but you get the idea)




















And a different one for my sis-in-law. She happened to have had a new baby last year and I put on a big baby blue pearl for baby boy, a smaller white pearl for his birthstone, and stamped a silver tag with his birthdate on it.

Wood Photo Boards...
Did these a couple of years ago for a friend and liked them so much that I did a couple of different family photo set for each of our parents.  You can see better examples of this idea with a tad bit of instruction in this post.

Chalkboard Coasters...
Thirty cent tiles from Home Depot, spray-painted with chalkboard paint, backed with cork and wrapped up with a few sticks of chalk. Fun!

Holiday Cocktails Recipe Book...
(sorry, no picture)
I simply collected Holiday Drink Recipes, printed them out and prettied up with holiday paper, stickers and letters, and made it into a book with binder clips.

Cinnamon Drink Mix...
just filled a jar with this yummy recipe and added the mix directions and big pretty bow.


Homemade Coffee Creamers...
Did these for both our moms. Found a couple of sets of little jars at Homegoods and filled them with different homemade flavored coffee creamers. (recipe ideas here) Yum!

Kids' Self-Portrait Magnets...
We actually get these through our school, but I love this idea for grandparents and such! Kids' art turned into a great magnet!!

And now for this year's gifts....

Scarves...
This was my favorite gift to make as it was so quick, easy, fun and (whispers) *cheap*. I collected a dozen or so t-shirts from our local thrift store (on half-off day, so they were about fifty cents apiece!) and some cozy fleece and pieced them together, following this quick tutorial. Here are a couple...

One I made with a "US cities" theme:

 It's for my sister who lived in Vegas for a few years.

And then I made this one which was by far the easiest and, I think, pretty cool looking.   "Infinity" scarves are all the rage right now, right?!
Tutorial here.












Key Fobs...
I forgot to take pictures of mine, but they look just like these. (picture from this seller... I had actually planned on just ordering from her for simplicity's sake -and because hers are so stinkin' cute- but her mom passed away and she was not taking orders before Christmas.  So I had to take matters into my own hands...)
I made two for two of my sisters... bought the clasps and jump rings from a seller on Etsy, and then used some cute coordinating fabric.  I'm not a fan of my own handwriting when trying to make a gift look nice, so I did a cute "handwritten" font on the computer and just printed out quotes and the girls' names on some white cotton.  Did you know you can print right on fabric?!  I just taped some white cotton to a piece of printer paper and it ran right through!
Anyway, they turned out pretty cute.  And I have supplies for about 13 more key fobs if anyone wants to buy one from me.... ;)
If you want to make your own, there are key fob tutorials all over the place, take your pick.

Family Tree Canvases...
I love this one too.

I slapped some background paint on a canvas, cut a tree out of brown patterned scrapbook paper, ran a few different patterned green papers through my Silhouette to make leaves and tada! I added ribbon, printed out a fitting bible verse and then used a set of alphabet stamps to "carve" our family names in the tree. My parents initials are in the heart.




















This is a second one I did, totally copied the idea from one on Etsy, but obviously constructed ours with our own words and names. Then we simply had it printed as a photo image on canvas thru Costco for a great deal.  :)
And last but not least, the biggest project (x3), but my absolute-favorite-I-wish-someone-would-make-one-for-me gift...
The Game Blanket.
Brilliant idea and step-by-step tutorial found here.

It's a picnic blanket with built in games...  Bingo, Tic Tac Toe, and Checkers.
The backside is made from a vinyl tablecloth so it's waterproof
and the corners are sewn-in pockets to hold game pieces, cards, other kids' games, etc.

I made three of these babies... all in different colors. And I don't even really know how to sew, so you know they're totally doable.  But being that I don't even really know how to sew, they all took me awhile.  So worth it though.  I loved them.


I love doing the homemade gifts and as overwhelmed as I felt this time (which really had nothing to do with the gifts themselves, but all the other crazy things we had going on in November and December!), I am aiming to do all handmade again next year.  The only thing I struggle with is finding new ideas... and ideas for the guys are the hardest.  And the fact that we have to ship most of our gifts.  If I were doing gifts for locals, my idea list would be larger I think; not having to worry about size or weight or breakability!
The trick I realized this year, is to find a few great projects and do several of those... like the fact that we did pillows/pjs for all the kids, game blankets for all our married siblings, scarves for others, and family trees for our parents.  This idea keeps things simple; you get good at making those few things, you can still personalize each one, but it's not a million supplies for a million different projects.