To be quite honest, I truly feel that the custom of gift giving has gone all the way out of hand. We seem to have lost the essence of what giving someone dear to you a present really means. It seems to have become more about how much the gift costs than anything else, with some friends and family members, even going as far as trying to outdo each other when they exchange gifts.
So it goes beyond just citing the old adage of it being the “thought that counts.” This is about restoring the true essence of gift-giving and making it all meaningful again.
All of that said, however, you still don’t want to come across as cheap and the only real way of doing that is if you are indeed cheap and you quickly picked up a generic party-trick gift you think the recipient has perhaps never come into contact with in their lives before at the £1 store. Gifts that go the furthest to really hit home with the recipient are those which have a lot of thought put into them, particularly DIY gifts. The problem with DIY gifts, however, is the perception that they’re bound to come across as cheap, no matter how much thought, time and effort went into putting them together.
That doesn’t have to be the case however as some DIY gift ideas embody the true essence of gift-giving, with the feeling they induce coming in as something which can never be bought in any shop, for any amount of money.
Bath Bombs
Bath bombs as a DIY gift won’t come across as cheap because they’re not — it takes quite a bit of time and effort to make them, especially if you really take the time to make them look like something that comes from a unique gifts shop. Also known as fizzies, you’ll have to take a bit of time to search for the instructions on how to make them (it shouldn’t be a chore at all really), but what’s important is how you “bake” them. Use a baking pan that has some interesting patterns or formations and then wrap them up in little plastic gift wrappers to be sealed off with a ribbon string and a gift tag.
Exotic Candy Bouquet
Simply take an ordinary candy bouquet and replace the local or common candies that come with it with some exotic candies. It doesn’t take much to source exotic candy these days, but some sweet tastes from far and wide will never come across as cheap.
Custom Garden Stepping Stones
You’ll be getting your hands dirty with this one and you’ll be spending some money on supplies such as concrete, so custom stepping stones could never come across as cheap either. After all, time is money and quite a bit of your time will go into making these. Again, the onus is on you to search for the exact instructions, but it’s really as easy as baking ornamental fragments of the likes of sea glass, ceramic plates, glass gems and anything else that’ll look really nice into rounded cement slabs, perhaps with the use of a round, non-stick cake pan.
