Skip to main content

Preparing home made gifts for Christmas


Image by Lori from Pixabay

So I’m well aware we are more than six months ahead before Christmas arrives. But it did make me think, if I want to give crochet gifts to a lot of people for Christmas including my friends and family, I am going to have to start now and crochet one a week to at least make enough gifts by Christmas.

So how do you work out a plan to craft for Christmas? 

First work out what you can make that doesn’t take too long? For me crocheting is what I will be gifting. A scarf takes too long and it’s summer at Christmas in Australia. So the best crochet item so far that I have made that doesn’t take too long to make is a crochet koala. Which I feel is a great Christmas gift being an Australian native animal. Plus it’s cute. 

So to make a plan, what you first need to do is work out what will take you less than five hours to make. 

Then work out how many friends and family you want to make this for? 

Work out how many weeks till Christmas. 

Can you produce one craft gift a week to meet your goal? Noting, it’s ok if you have a few weeks spare to accomodate sickness, trips away etc. If you have too many to make maybe push out your goal to next year’s Christmas. Or cut down and give one per family / couple rather than every person in the family. You don’t want to stress yourself out trying to craft gifts because that takes away the joy of crafting the gift. 

Work out the cost. For me a koala uses three different coloured yarn colours. However, to varying degrees does not use the whole yarn for one koala. So I could get quite a lot of materials out of one yarn. I would need grey the most. 

Yarn for me in Australia costs $2.50. So it’s not too expensive to create. Although it does add up and for 20 gifts that is $50 roughly. That is why you want to push out the crochet gift to one a week, so instead of paying $50 upfront you can pay over each week $2.50 which is less daunting. 

Last year, was my first year crocheting and I made big plans that my family and friends would get different crocheting plushies that I thought they would like. I started in May and finished in June. And no, I didn’t finish making the Christmas gifts, I gave up. Why? Because it was stressful for me to follow new patterns every time. That’s why this year, everyone gets a koala. One pattern. 

Also, I decided I was new at this and just wanted to focus on gifting to my family only and I focussed on that rather than spending every weekend crocheting and feeling stressed that it wouldn’t be good enough or finished in time. 

That’s why this year I have a plan. Because I still think a homemade gift is nicer to give and more personable, even if everyone gets the same thing. 

Plus, I can only get better and better at crocheting koalas the more I do. So win / win. 

Please comment below what you will be making as a Christmas craft gift for your family and friends? 

#crocheting #homemadegift #christmasgift 

Follow me on Pinterest at: @melanietoye

Follow me on Facebook and receive all my blog posts here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1AEkVDXzeT/?mibextid=LQQJ4d

Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-toye-a3267644?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

Subscribe to my Hobbies YouTube channel at littlemissmel23.  

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Crocheting my first blanket

So I decided that crocheting animals etc is pretty stressful. Not really stressful but not relaxing. A cool end result but I wanted to find something to crochet where I didn’t have to count the stitches or focus on the different type of stitches. So I decided to crochet a simple blanket.  I just wanted to use a small amount of stitches and not count them. I didn’t want to do anything fancy. But I still wanted to crochet. I believe if I could find something to stitch that I could just relax doing than it was worth it. I started googling a simply blanket planet using single crochet stitch. And I found one. It’s simple start off with the first row with a chain stitch and then turn it over and do the rest with a single crochet stitch. Brilliant. So I started crocheting a baby blanket. It didn’t work out. The sides were uneven and the blanket was all different lengths. So I googled and realised after I do a row of single crochet stitches, I have to do one chain stitch at the end before ...
Post a Comment
Read more

I crocheted my first scarf

  If you are a subscriber to my hobbies YouTube channel @littlemissmel23, last week I posted a video on how to crochet a scarf. I couldn’t show the end result because it was already a long video, so I decided to show you on my blog. I have added the video to this blog post if you are interested in watching it for the pattern.  The final result: The final result is quite good I feel. I did a thin scarf and I ran out of pink yarn so I decided to add white. I’m quite proud of this scarf. I am going to play with the sizing and in particular the width of the scarf.  Now my kids have seen the first scarf, they are wanting me to make them one as well. They even chose the coloured yarn they want. One wants black and then white like my pink and white one pictured. And my other son wants a combination of blue white yarn.  As per the video, I plan to crochet 5-7 scarves for myself so I can wear one each day and change the scarf colour pending the outfit.  Scarf crocheting ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why you should scrapbook

  I have only been doing for scrapbooking for about a year but I absolutely love it. Here’s why you should take it up: Photos  So I got a new phone and lost about half of my photos and videos from last year, even though I am paying for the iCloud. It’s ok, it’s just a harsh reality of using technology. I also save my photos to a hard drive, another downfall because that could break and then all my photos will be lost. So what’s the best way to ensure photos are kept - by printing them. I really believe this. And then worst case scenario if you have a fire and lose your printed photos, you still have the photos electronically and you can start again.  I worked out that for about 12,000 photos at 10c each to be printed, it will cost about $1200. But 12,000 photos is a lot and you would have to go through the ones you actually want to print which could drop it by half and that’s now $600.  Now you don’t have to pay for it in one large hit and to be honest the printing s...
Post a Comment
Read more