Christmas Gifts for Friends: 25 Homemade, Cheap and Thoughtful Ideas
Five Ferrero Rocher in a ring, wrapped in cellophane with a gingham bow. A deck of UNO cards with your friends’ faces glued into the middle. A plate that has no owner and travels from kitchen to kitchen. The Christmas gifts for friends that people keep saving on Pinterest cost little and take an evening at most, and the best of them could only have come from one person.
Below are 25 pins from the most saved boards of Christmas gift ideas for friends. The first two groups are things you make in a batch, from the kitchen or the craft table, for the whole friend group or the whole street. The last group is for one best friend. Ten of the pins are short videos you can watch right on this page, and one is a list of cheap or free ideas that is worth reading to the end.
Homemade Christmas gifts for friends from the kitchen
1. Ferrero Rocher mini wreaths
Arrange five or six Ferrero Rocher in a circle, wrap them in cellophane, and tie a red gingham bow and a small wooden tag on top. “DIY your way to Christmas gifts!” says the caption. Make a dozen, and the whole friend group is covered.
2. Sangria in a drink dispenser
Fill a glass drink dispenser with oranges, lemons, limes and cranberries, stand a bottle of wine inside, and tie a wooden spoon to the lid with gingham ribbon. The description makes a point that is easy to miss: the dispenser stays with your friend and gets used for every party after this one.
3. Christmas morning pancakes
Pancake mix in a big mason jar, a small jar of syrup on top, and a striped ribbon holding the two together. The label carries the whole recipe: one cup of mix, one cup of milk, one egg. Your friend wakes up on Christmas morning with nothing left to figure out.
4. A simmer pot in an oven mitt
Tuck a bag of dried orange slices, cranberries and greenery into a floral oven mitt. The description gives the recipe: four to six cups of water, a teaspoon each of whole cloves and allspice, a star anise, two or three cinnamon sticks, a few orange slices, sprigs of pine or rosemary and a handful of fresh cranberries, left to simmer on the stove for a few hours. Write it on the tag.
5. Clay jar lids
On the lid, a peppermint swirl with a little gingerbread man sitting on top; in the jar, gingerbread cookies. Its maker used air-dry clay, acrylic paint and a glossy varnish, and added toothpicks so the figures stay on. She says the lids are washable but shouldn’t be soaked, and if you use oven-bake clay instead, pick glass or metal lids that can go in the oven.
6. A tea towel bread basket
“Yes, that bread basket is a tea towel.” The video shows how a red-and-white plaid towel folds into a holder for bread. Wrap a loaf of homemade bread this way, and the wrapping is a second present.
Small Christmas gifts for friends and neighbors
7. A clementine garland
Lay clementines in a row on a long strip of cellophane, roll it up and twist the plastic between each fruit, then tie every twist with red-and-white baker’s twine. The result is a string of oranges you can coil into a wreath, with a “Merry Christmas” tag on the end. Among Christmas presents for neighbors, it is one of the few that is healthy.
8. An elf candy pot
Paint a small clay pot green, glue a pointed red glitter collar around the rim, add a jingle bell to every point, and fill a cellophane bag of red, green and silver Hershey’s Kisses. Its description calls it an elf-themed gift for neighbors or friends. After the candy is gone, the pot holds a small plant.
9. A hot cocoa box with a name
Each white box holds two small jars with snowman faces, one with cocoa mix and one with marshmallows, plus striped paper straws, a dipped pretzel and a candy cane. Lying across the top is a cut-out name: “Amanda” on one box, “Cocoa” on the other. Names cut from cardstock work just as well as the shiny ones.
10. Sixteen gifts for $60
The video’s cover shows a table of Christmas tins in poinsettia and holly prints, each tied with wide plaid ribbon, and promises “$60 total for 16 gifts”. That works out to $3.75 a gift. Tins are the trick: they look like a lot before you have put anything inside.
11. Cheap or free gift ideas
Twenty-four ideas on a black background, and almost none of them involve a store. Pressed flowers in an old picture frame. Coffee grounds with a thrifted mug. Tea bags with a thrifted kettle and cups. Polaroids in handmade clay stands. Vintage books with a homemade bookmark. Burned CDs. Homemade vegetable broth. These are the cheap Christmas gifts for friends in the most literal sense: pick two and give them together.
Добавить в заметки чтобы посмотреть позже?12. Snow globes in mason jars
Pour fake snow into a small mason jar, set a toy car on it with a bottle-brush tree tied to the roof, and close the lid. Here a red pickup, a red jeep and a red-and-white VW bus each carry a tree, and red bells hang from the twine around each lid. Pick the toy that looks most like your friend’s own car.
DIY Christmas gifts for friends
13. Teacup candles
Thrift stores are full of single teacups without a set. Pour candle wax into one, saucer and all, and it becomes an upcycled teacup candle, as the description calls it. The video’s cover in the embed shows a pan of wax labeled “used candles”, so the stubs of old candles are enough to fill a cup.
14. Rose bracelets
Tiny knotted roses in pink, cream and sage, tied one after another on a cord until they go all the way around the wrist. Three of them sit on the fingers in the video, which is a tutorial. Friendship bracelets are the easiest of the DIY Christmas gifts for friends to make in a set, one color for each person.
15. A pompom teddy bear keychain
Brown and cream yarn wound into a pompom, trimmed into a bear’s head, with a pink satin bow and a metal ring. The caption, in Portuguese, says it is easy and quick to make, and that it can be sold for a little extra money or given as a small present.
16. Collage bookmarks
Old magazine faces, crossword grids and newspaper print, cut up and glued onto card, each with a punch line: “What do you want, good grammar or good taste?”, “Boys should cry”, “Drama in the afternoon”. Letter beads on the tassels spell out short words. Laminate them, and they will survive a whole stack of library books.
17. A ring holder from a tiny frame
An ornate gold oval frame the size of a palm, gingham fabric where the photo would be, and a small hook in the middle to hang rings on while washing dishes. “Love our DIY ring holder for our kitchen sink!!” the post says.
18. A frame covered in trinkets
Glue everything from the junk drawer onto a thrifted frame: pearls, red and gold beads, dice, a magic 8 ball, a mini champagne bottle, letter beads spelling “CHEERS”, a tiny white figurine. Every object can be an inside joke. Put a photo of the two of you in the middle.
Christmas gift ideas for best friend
19. A View-Master reel of your photos
Remember the plastic viewers with a cardboard reel of pictures? Image3D, according to the description, puts your own photos on a reel and can personalize the viewer too; this one is blue, with two names printed above the lenses. The reel holds a ring of small photos, and the lever moves them one click at a time.
20. UNO with your faces
Print small photos of everyone in the friend group, cut them into ovals and glue them into the middle of a regular UNO deck. The numbers and colors stay readable, so the game still works. Each friend now has a card value: decide together who is the draw four.
21. A memory camera
A black card cut and drawn to look like a camera, with a stack of photo prints on binder rings behind it. Each print is one memory from the year. The description calls it a DIY Memory Snapshot Camera, made to “recapture 2023”. For this Christmas, use this year’s photos and write the date on the back of each.
22. Mini burr baskets for the besties
“Make mini burr baskets for my besties with me!” Each small cream plush basket holds a can of cherry slush soda, a pink pouch, a red Christmas card, a peppermint-print box, a candy cane and a pink box marked strawberry, and a red bow finishes it off. Matching baskets for a group are the best friend Christmas gifts nobody fights over.
23. Thumbprint phone cases
Two thumbprints in paint, one yellow and one blue, turned into little characters with eyes and smiles, holding hands under a red heart, with a name over each. Slip the drawing behind a clear phone case and make a second one for yourself.
24. Movies we’ve watched together
A kraft-paper scrapbook page with a cinema ticket, a popcorn box and small printed posters of every film you saw together this year, from The Wild Robot to Perfect Blue. Keep adding pages, and in ten years it is a history of the friendship.
25. The giving plate
A white plate with a poem written on it: “This plate shall have no owner, for its journey never ends. It travels in a circle of our family and friends.” Bring it to a friend with cookies on it. They fill it with something of their own and pass it on, and nobody has to remember whose plate it is.