Just a few craft ideas especially for kids to make for mother’s day that go beyond the usual macaroni necklace. Websites like Frugal Family Fun Blog, Kaboose and Family Fun have a whole range of craft ideas for kids both specifically for mother’s day and other crafting ideas. The Crafty Monkey has some other special mother’s day gift ideas.

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When it comes to making gift hampers, a great source of inspiration is professional hampers. Browsing through shops or looking online (Google Images is a great tool for this), will give you plenty of ideas for ways to make up your own hamper.

Below is a collection of Easter hampers from actual businesses. I’m not suggesting that you buy any of these hampers – the idea is to use the pictures for inspiration to create your own hampers. Seeing that I nicked the photos, I thought I should at least provide links to the websites from which the photos came (in the very least, they will get some Google link love).

The hampers below include commercial Easter chocolates, but you could couple an attractive hamper with handmade chocolates. My mum reminded me that she used to make most of our Easter chocolates as this was much cheaper than buying them. She would swap moulds with the next door neighbour to ensure a variety. Writing these articles have certainly inspired me to do some of my own chocolate making.

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I have a little bit of a history when it comes to chocolate. Apart from being a chocolate lover, that is!

When I was a kid, my mum had her own home-based business making handmade chocolates. Everything from the tiny hand-painted delicacies filled with sweetness, to a giant Easter bunny which had around a kilogram of chocolate in it. Sometimes I would help her individually wrap each one for sale and occasionally I would make my own chocolates for gifts.

Later, the first department I worked in at Grace Bros, quite a few years ago now, was the confectionary department (when there was one), which became the Easter egg department at this time of the year (and for at least two months before Easter). So I learnt a couple of things about chocolate.

Chocolate is high in antioxidants and therefore is pretty good for you. The problem is, that most of us don’t actually eat real chocolate. Many of the popular brands that we consume are cheaper than real chocolate because they substitute the cocoa butter for vegetable oil and then increase the amount of sugar to make it taste ok. Vegetable oil and sugar cause the very problems that the antioxidants are supposed to prevent.

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Previously, I’ve never been a fan of hampers as gifts, they seem so impersonal. However, I’ve changed my mind because a well thought out, personalised hamper that you create yourself can be a great gift that will be well received and used.

I’ve had a little experience making up hampers. When I worked in Grace Bros, I started in the Confectionary department. Christmas and Easter were our busiest times and one of the services that we provided was making up personalised gift baskets. Over the years, I probably made over 300.

Actually, making personalised gift baskets can be a lot of fun. The key to a successful hamper is tailoring it to the recipient, so that you ensure that they will really like every item that you include and it is a useful gift rather than being ‘just another hamper’. Of course, this is a lot more work than just buying a pre-wrapped hamper off the shelf.

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Photo source

Need inspiration for a handmade Valentine gift idea? I’ve put together a little collection of Valentine’s Day inspired handmade tutorials from around the net.

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I made up some hampers for Christmas this year. The hampers had an ‘afternoon tea’ theme and included a plate, a hand designed and embroidered tea cloth, some fresh QLD coffee beans, Northern NSW English Breakfast tea, homemade choc-chip cookies and homemade caramel filled truffles. To give the hamper a sense of unity I used the same paper to make all the packets. The labels were created using GIMP.

Homemade hampers are an inexpensive, personalised gift for any occasion. While they may not cost a lot, a lot of time, thought and effort goes into making these. The key to making them great is having quality ingredients inside all the fancy packaging.

So I thought that I would share how to make up these pretty packets and boxes.

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It’s easy to buy all our Christmas decorations, but we can extend the fun of Christmas by making some decorations in the weeks before. I’ve put together a collection of Christmas decoration tutorials covering a whole range of craft techniques that will, I hope, inspire.

An easy ornament that my grandmother used to make was wrapping pine cones with tinsel and putting these on the windowsill.

A great source of inspiration is the shops. There displays can be amazing and the ornaments lovely, but usually I think, “I can make that.”

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Stuck for a Chrissy gift idea? On a budget? Why not make your own Christmas gifts. I’ve put together a series of articles with ideas to help you get inspired. There are thousands of patterns and tutorials on the net, these are just a taster for inspiration.

If you haven’t already check out Part 1 – Bath and Body , Part 2 – Home and Garden, Part 3 – Accessories and Part4 – Food gifts.

A great way to gift your handmade goodies is to package them all together in a gift basket or hamper, or just a beautifully made gift box. One one hand I’m not keen on commercial gift hampers, but personalised handmade hampers are a totally different thing. I prefer not to use baskets but something that is going to be used.

One of the things that I like to do is to collect a few ideas such as hand embroidered napkins with homemade biscuits and personalised gift packed coffee on a inexpensive serving plate with matching mugs.

Themed hampers work well too, like spa hampers or baby hampers or garden hampers.

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Stuck for a Chrissy gift idea? On a budget? Why not make your own Christmas gifts. I’ve put together a series of articles with ideas to help you get inspired. There are thousands of patterns and tutorials on the net, these are just a taster for inspiration.

If you haven’t already check out Part 1 – Bath and Body, Part 2 – Home and Garden and Part 3 – Accessories.

For some of these recipes you will need to sterilise jars and bottles and possibly preserve using a water bath.

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Stuck for a Chrissy gift idea? On a budget? Why not make your own Christmas gifts. I’ve put together a series of articles with ideas to help you get inspired. There are thousands of patterns and tutorials on the net, these are just a taster for inspiration.

If you haven’t already check out Part 1 – Bath and Body and Part 2 – Home and Garden.

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