Have any ideas for homemade gifts to make and give?

Although it's far off, I like to think about Christmas very much in advance. I'm just looking for craft ideas that make good gifts. I'll need ideas for both children and adults. Thanks a bunch!

Have any ideas for homemade gifts to make and give?
One year, we made Soup in a Jar and Cookies in a Jar, both of which went over very well, especially for adults. My suggestion is to assemble the jar, then try making the recipe. If it turns out well, it's worth making more as gifts.





You can also experiment with homemade soaps. Do fancier ones with herbs or oatmeal and such for adults, and for the kids, you can embed small toys in blocks of clear glycerine.





There are TONS of ideas on this website.





http://familycrafts.about.com/cs/giftsto...
Reply:If you're interested in polymer clay, or would like to try it, I've gathered a bunch of polymer ideas that might be especially good as gifts on this page:


http://glassattic.com/polymer/gifts_men_...








Diane B.
Reply:This is kind of cool:


Take an old picture frame that the backs maybe falling off of , and the glass is missing, paint it, glue screening behind it. Just the regular window screen will work, spray the whole thing with a glitter frost. In some sort of whitish paint write Snowflakes 5c, or some other cute phrase that you think of with winter. Then make some snowflakes from paper pulp, and hang those from wires that are connected to the corner of the frame. What you get is a cute old time looking gift that is reusable, homemade, and people go crazy over them. The cool thing is, they're inexpensive to make, and don't take that much time.
Reply:You can try looking over the Homemade Gift Contest that Instructables held for this past Christmas. My entry was the personalized Guess Who game. It went over big with my girlfriend.





http://www.instructables.com/group/gifts...


http://www.instructables.com/id/EK4OAVRS...
Reply:Hi:





It's never to early for planning hand crafted items - and the more time the better! Here's something that I've been doing - I get brown paper mache boxes when they're on discount at places like Hobby Lobby or Michaels, and then I paint and decorate them with nice papers, ribbons, glass gems and other similar items, line them with embossed felt or silk fabric remnants, and use those to give little trinkets like earrings or other jewelry, that I've also make sometimes. When I gave some gifts in those boxes last Christmas, the people who got them really liked them. If you look for my yahoo group - artist_pw - I put a snapshot of one of those boxes on the home page if you want to see one.





You can also make cool little fabric beads out of remnants of fabric. I first saw a project like this in the Winter 2002 Belle Armoire magazine a few years ago, and I have a lot of bits of raw silk from making mats for pastels paintings that I can use to make beads like this. You can use coffee stirrers as the center of the fabric bead, and then roll the fabric strips up to over them make small beads - and then use fabric glue to hold - I think you could also use liquid polymer clay and bake or heat them (particularly silk, because it can really take the heat). Then you can embellish further with wires, seed beads or other fibers like yarns. You can use these fabric beads in jewelry. Unfortunately, this issue is sold out in the back orders, but there is a photo you can see there to see what those look like. This magazine is really cool, and almost every item in it is scoped out in a project that you could try. At the very least, it may give you some inspirations for your own delightful projects. These items are probably more adult oriented, but some kids might like some of the items, too.





One thing I saw somewhere that I might make for a young boy of about 6 or 7 is a felted wizard hat. I thought that would be pretty cool, and with all the Harry-Potterish stuff around, I thought it might be a good gift. I'd probably knit the base of dark purplish blue wool yarn (or add fabric paint to make it the color I'd want), then wet felt it, and then get yellow wool rovings to needle felt stars and moons on it, and maybe add further embellishments. I also thought about felting a lion's head or head gear, but I thought the wizard hat might be better. Anyway, let me know if you want some more ideas - I have a lot of them, but never the time to make them all. Hope this helps.