Gift/Craft Ideas

The holiday season is upon us and with it, comes the joyful yet sometimes daunting task of finding the perfect gifts for loved ones. Whether you’re shopping or making gifts from scratch, choosing or crafting meaningful presents can be a challenge. Fortunately, we've got some ideas to make your holiday season truly memorable!

Handmade Gifts (general ideas):

1. Customized ceramics

Painting clay with acrylic paint can result in cute, personalized decor or household appliances such as bowls, cups, plates, and more. Clay bases and paint can be purchased at craft stores.

2. Personalized tote bags, clothes, fabrics, etc.

This can be easily crafted with extra pieces of fabric and unused clothes! You can spice up the old pieces by painting a design using basic acrylic paints or fabric paint.

3. Knitting or crocheted gifts

For those skilled in crocheting, you can search for crochet patterns to make a handmade gift from blankets, stuffed animals (with cotton), and clothing. Some great places to start can be with people like Bella Coco Crochet or The Crochet Crowd on YouTube!

4. Memory jar, inspirational jar, quote jar

The basic gist for each variation is writing 50 things about the gift recipient. This could range from things you live with, to their favorite memories. Some others can be writing about inside jokes, memories, and words of encouragement.

5. Customized phone case backs

For this gift, it requires a transparent phone case. By taking the back-side of this phone case, take a piece of paper around the size of the back of the gift recipient’s phone and customize it with stickers, doodles, and photos. They can put the paper on the back of their phone as decoration.

6. Customized playlist and album covers

Playlists can be made physically, through the burning of a CD, or digitally, via Spotify. Make the gift more unique through a customized album cover, which can be hand drawn, a memorable photo, or a unique design made from Canva or Google Slides.

7. Slideshow or collage of favorite memories

A slideshow can be made digitally on Canva or Google Slides. Alternatively, it can be something physical like a scrapbook or poster. Presenting your Slideshow/Collage can be elevated using transitions or props!

8. Home Baked goods

You can make a family recipe for the gift recipient or check out this issue’s holiday cookbook for some ideas!

9. Coupon book

Fold a piece of paper into thirds and cut, then put small favors you'd do for the gift recipient. To make the book: create multiple coupons, hole punch them, and tie them all together. 

10. Personalized flower bouquet 

A bouquet can be done with real flowers if you have a skill of flower arrangement or out of fake flowers with materials such as paper (origami), pipe cleaners, or beads.

Store Bought / Handmade (could be either or):

1. Jewelry 

Handmade jewelry can be made with different kinds of beads and string, but also purchased at nearby stores such as Target.

2. Stickers

Stickers can be purchased at stores, like Daiso or Hobby Lobby, or even homemade using parchment paper, tape, and paper with the sticker design. Steps:

• Tape down a square of parchment paper 

• Cover the surface of the parchment paper with tape

• Place the design on top of the tape

• Fully over the design with tape

• Cut out the sticker while leaving a border around the design

Store Bought (general ideas):

1. Bath and Bodyworks

Many products at Bath and Bodyworks, which is located at the Valencia Town Center, can make perfect gifts. Their best products include lotions, shampoo, conditioner, soap, hand sanitizer, perfume, candles, and more!

2. Art Supplies, Books, journals, Sketchbooks

Cheap and good quality art supplies can be found at Micheals while Barnes & Nobles have good options for books and journals.

3. Gift cards 

An Amazon, Target, or maybe even Sephora and Barnes and Noble gift card can make for great books when you’re unsure of what to get someone. Plus, gift cards can be found at a majority of nearby stores, such as Albertsons.