There are a few steps to giving a good gift with very little out of pocket.
The first is to make a list. It sounds simple, and for some people it is. If you are like me you get the rebound list – the one where you remember three more people after you thought you had finished.
Start with the list, properly
Everyone you need to give to, and roughly what you want to spend on each – in money and in time.
That second column is the one people leave out, and it is the one that matters. Handmade gifts cost time, and time is the resource that runs out in December.
Be selective
The commonest mistake is deciding to handmake everything and then rushing the lot.
A rushed handmade gift is worse than a bought one. Choose the people for whom it will mean most, make properly for them, and buy for the rest without guilt.
Start absurdly early
Summer is not too soon.
Handmade gifts take time that does not exist in December, and starting early also spreads the cost across months rather than concentrating it.
Buy materials in sales through the year for things you know you will make.
Layered jar gifts
One of the best value ideas there is. Dry ingredients for a favourite recipe, layered in a jar so the bands of colour show, with the instructions on a tag.
Cookie mixes, soup mixes, hot chocolate, spice blends. They cost very little, they look far more impressive than the effort involved, and they get used rather than stored.
The layering is what does the work – the same ingredients tipped in loose look like nothing.
Other low-cost, high-value gifts
Yarn crafts using one skein. A cowl, fingerless mitts, a set of dishcloths. An evening each.
Baked goods in a decorated box.
Decorated containers – jars, tins – filled with something.
A framed photograph in a hand-decorated frame.
Herb or spice blends, dried and jarred.
Presentation carries it
This is where inexpensive gifts are won or lost, and it costs almost nothing.
Good wrapping, a proper handwritten tag, and a note saying what it is and how to use or care for it. Something modest, well finished and well presented reads as generous. The same thing in a carrier bag does not.
Make in batches
Setting up and clearing away takes the same time for one as for six. A single afternoon of jar gifts can cover half a list.
