Very Homemade Gift Baskets Toys and Health/Beauty items – attempt #1

I needed an inexpensive Christmas this year. I won’t go into reasons why I’m so broke since I know I’m not the only one having difficulties. My stockpile is coming along and there’s couponers who use their own “inventory” to make gift baskets.

I’m happy with how these turned out. This is totally not my thing, I’m not very crafty, but I figured I’d give it a shot. These gift baskets are for Maurice’s family.

Challenges
We had challenges in that we had to ship them, so they needed to be somewhat small without handles. We originally were going to do several smaller, individual gift baskets, but decided to do fewer baskets with things packed tighter.

What’s inside
We didn’t do themes at all, we just thought about what each person might like. All of it except for a few fillers are from CVS (and one Wags trip), all of the cosmetics, shampoo/conditioner, shaving accessories, chap sticks, lotions, toothpaste, the Ice Age DVD. One basket is for Maurice’s folks, along with a package of candles and a gag gift (not pictured). One basket is for three very little girls, along with a package containing two Zhu Zhu pet hampsters (3rd little girl is too young, Zhu Zhus not pictured), and 2 accessories,  their car and a squirrelly tube, I got lucky at CVS and just paid ECBs for these, using $/$$ coupons. The third basket is for their mother, Maurice’s sister. And the fourth basket is for their son (Xbox gift card) and Maurice’s brother-in-law (everything else). The crinkly shredded paper came from CVS this week, free after ECB, much like everything else or close to it.

Gift Basket Supplies and Assembly
I got the baskets at the Dollar Tree along with the shrink wrap bags, ribbon, and bells. Their selection was surprising and outstanding, the baskets I chose are woven wood with holiday details around the brim. The shrink wrap bags look much nicer in person, they don’t photograph well. You just stick the basket into the bottom of the bag and use a hair dryer on high heat and the thick plastic molds over the items. You really can’t mess these up, you can even remold them once or twice if you make a mistake. They each came with 1 pull bow and I used the bows before realizing they weren’t very Christmas-y. But I’d already spent about 30 minutes adding the bells and red and white ribbons and Maurice was going to kill me if I redid the bows haha.

I’m certainly no Suzy Homemaker and I’m not very creative so don’t judge too harshly! And this is my first attempt people!

We made cards printed from the computer with handwritten messages and stopped at CVS to print off a few recent photos that we put into the cards. These gift baskets were added to a few other gifts we sent in a medium sized box. If you used smaller items and tighter shrink wrapping, you could fit a basket this size in a medium flat-rate usps box and ship it anywhere in the country for $10.35 (after 1/4/10 $10.70).

Stabilize
I taped down all of the items to the basket and to each other. I also taped the tops on shampoo bottles, etc. I then taped the items to other items to stabilize. A lot of shredded paper was used in the bottoms. The shrink wrap also held the items in place. Since these were shipping I had to be more careful. They were packed upright very tightly using the excess shrink wrap as padding.

Resources
I’ve read amazing, creative tips on gift baskets:
Gifting Your Stockpiles – Excellent from SD
Gift Basket Assembly
Gift Basket Theme Ideas
How to make a unique gift basket

Tips
The shrink bag excess goes under the gift basket. I didn’t know that so it’s not the end of the world if you forget or don’t, but it gives the basket smoother lines.

Plan in advance and purchase 50-100 of the shrink bags on eBay for about $16-$20. Mine said 2pc. and were only $1 each but the 2nd piece was the bow and had I known there was only 1 per bag I would have price shopped, I have more gift baskets to assemble this year and bought 10 of these total.

If you have room to store them for a year, grab Christmas baskets and ribbons that go on clearance after the holidays.