Inexpensive Gifts to Make or Buy
Gifts for birthdays and holidays do not have to be expensive. You can make things yourself, or purchase something meaningful from another crafts person.
Lead-free pewter jewelry gifts are appreciated, especially when created by an artist. There’s certainly nothing wrong with supporting someone who is making their living creating art!
Some of today’s best known silver jewelers started with simple crafts and went on to create their own businesses. This article on beautiful silver animal charms was written by someone who started with a dream of being a professional artist and carried through!
You can also try your own hand at jewelry making. How about some beaded earrings or a necklace created from natural seeds? There are a number of wonderful resources out there that can help you with your own projects. Do you have a crafts store in your town? This would be the place to start.
Flip through some of the resource books available and something just may hit you as the perfect project to start with. Be brave! Be creative!
There’s a wonderful material that you may have heard of known as polymer clay . This has limitless potential as a craft item. Not only can you make your own interesting jewelry designs, but you can make little 3 dimensional figures that can sit on a bookcase as well.
There are so many creative possibilities with this material that I can’t begin to list them all here.
Just make sure you have all the supplies you need before you start.
When you are a beginning crafts person, it can’t hurt to observe what people are wearing. Fashions change, ebbing and flowing with the popularity of TV shows and what the latest and greatest celebrity is wearing. I’m not big on copying someone else’s art, but getting a general idea of what is popular is always smart.
For instance, a few years ago (in the 1980s) big colorful jewelry was all the rage. You couldn’t go wrong if you strung together some gigantic beads into a necklace, the bigger and brighter the better!
Well, times have changed. Now more subtle jewelry is popular.
Does that mean you shouldn’t try anything that isn’t currently being made? Absolutely not! It’s great to be creative and inventive. But at the same time, just get a feeling for what people are most likely to wear, even if you’re just creating something for a gift.
Back to the idea of inexpensive gifts to buy… When was the last time you found a treasure at the local antique or thrift store?
If you said “Never”, then you are missing out on some glorious opportunities for finding truly unusual gifts at bargain basement prices. Some of the treasures found might even help out a creative project you’re currently working on. For instance, old necklaces can be taken apart then restrung in creative new ways.
The possibilities are endless!