Make garden-inspired handmade gifts with these easy DIY gift ideas. Perfect for a meaningful holiday season.
For the last few Christmases, my siblings and I have agreed to gift each other handmade things instead of buying presents.
It definitely takes some of the financial pressure off, but it also makes the gifts feel extra meaningful.
Over the years, I’ve made everything from hand-knit hats to homecanned jams. Each gift is special because it also carries a tiny piece of me.
All the excitement, time, and energy I have goes into the gift. There’s a little bit of nervousness, too, to see if the recipient will like the gift you put so much effort and thought into.
It definitely helps when people get excited to receive your handmade gifts!
I remember one Christmas when I had made my in-laws and siblings matching knit hats and earwarmers.
Each gift was received with delight and a smile, but the best part was seeing my brother-in-law put on the hat I’d made for him right away and wear it in the family photo.
Moments like that make all the effort worth it.
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Handmade Gifts Are Worth Giving
Over time, I’ve noticed people seem to love the unique, personal gifts most: handmade soap with a tiny soap Christmas tree in it, a cozy hand-knit hat, or a little jar of garden-grown herb salt.
For me, giving gifts like these are extra satisfying. It’s always worth it to give a gift made with love to someone you care about. Even the simplest handmade gift can mean more than something bought at a store.
One of my favorite reminders of this comes from a book my daughter loves to read with me, As Cool as It Gets by Jory John.
In the story, the main character learns that a handmade, thoughtful gift is always worth giving, and by the end his new motto is: “When in doubt, make something!”
I think it’s a great motto to have around the holidays! We don’t need to spend a lot of money to show people we love and care about them.
Handmade Gift Ideas That Are Garden-Inspired
Here are a few gifts that I’ve made and given that I hope will inspire you to have a handmade holiday this year.
1. Herb Salts and Spice Blends
This is one of my favorite gifts to make and give. If you follow my herb-infused salt recipe, and you’re reading this early enough in the year, you can make this gift months ahead of time when the garden is abundant and generous.
Similarly, spice blends are easy to put together after you’ve dehydrated lots of herbs. You can also buy the dried herbs and spices you’ll need and just blend them yourself.
It still counts as handmade!
Try making your own
- taco seasoning,
- Cajun spice,
- herbes de Provence,
- Italian seasoning, or
- chicken rub.
Bottle the herb-infused salts and spice blends in a pretty jar like this one and add a personalized label.
It’s helpful to include suggestions of how to use the herb salt or spice blend. Head to my herb salt post to get ideas for using herb salts and include your favorite suggestions in a small handwritten recipe card.
2. Homecanned Jams, Jellies, and Preserves
Whether or not you use homegrown produce for it, a small jar of homecanned jam, jelly, or preserves is a sweet, seasonal, and meaningful gift.
I love making cranberry jams and preserves around the holidays when fresh cranberries are easy to find in stores.
No, I didn’t grow it myself, but I canned it and that counts.
You can play around with adding dried herbs to your canned goods for a unique and special touch. Dried herbs are safe to add to recipes for canning.
This year I’m trying cranberry jam with sage!
For gift recipients who don’t mind a bit of heat, my preserved candied jalapeño relish has always been a big hit as well!
3. Homemade Melt-and-Pour Soap
Unlike traditional soap making with lye and animal fat, melt-and-pour soaps are way easier to do for beginners!
All you have to do is melt the soap base and pour it into your mold.
You don’t have to have special equipment as long as you have a way to create a double boiler (a heat-proof bowl over a saucepan of boiling water is what I use) and some kind of container that will work as a soap mold. I used a loaf pan lined with parchment paper and cut the cooled soap into bars with a sharp kitchen knife.
Of course, there are plenty of pretty soap molds you can also choose from!
Most hobby and craft stores carry melt-and-pour soaps of different kinds. They’re also easy to find online.
Here’s a goat milk melt-and-pour soap base you might like. And from the same seller, a clear soap base that’s easy to dye or add dried flowers to.
Make your soaps special by adding essential oils, dyes, and dried flowers or herbs from your garden.
The hardest thing about making a melt-and-pour soap is deciding how to scent and decorate it!
4. Pressed Flower Resin Charms
Press tiny flowers and leaves from your garden and use them to make these charms out of resin.
From there you can add the resin charm to a chain, keyring, or make these DIY Ribbon Bookmarks.
It’s a special, unique, and beautiful way to give someone a little piece of your garden!
5. Infused Olive Oil
Flavored or infused oils are easy to make, but do require some hands-off time infuse the liquid.
To Make Infused Olive Oil:
To a glass pint jar of good quality olive oil, add up to 6 tablespoons of dried herbs or dried vegetables. Screw the lid on tight and let the herbs infuse in the oil for a couple weeks. Shake it every few days.
Strain out the dried herbs and vegetables and bottle up in a nice jar.
6. Sourdough Bread
This one year I decided to make beeswax wraps and homemade sourdough bread. Both projects are simple to do and I’ve done them before, very easily and successfully, I might add.
The only hiccup to this plan was that our oven was not able to stay hot. You can imagine how disastrous that is when baking bread.
To add to that, bread needs to be given as fresh as possible, so I was baking this bread in a faulty oven the morning of the Christmas party!
I barely had time to fully bake and cool the loaves before wrapping them and giving them away! So maybe make sure your oven works before deciding to do this one!
Even so, a beautiful loaf of crusty bread wrapped in a beeswax wrap always makes for a great handmade gift.
Most people love crusty sourdough bread, as it’s a bit more unique than regular yeast bread. Make yours even more special by flavoring the dough with herbs, veggies, and flowers from your garden.
To a basic recipe for sourdough:
- add fresh or dried rosemary and garlic (finely chopped)
- add dried bachelor button petals for a pop of color
- replace some of the liquid with tomato juice or puree and add dried basil and oregano (this bread will taste just like pizza!)
Wrap the finished loaf in a handmade beeswax wrap like the one I made in this post.
If you’re not much of a DIYer, it’s easy to buy a wrap.
You can go as fully homemade or semi-homemade as you like with this.
I also suggest including a small jar of preserves or flavored olive oil to round out the gift!
I use this recipe for my sourdough bread.
7. Homemade Extracts
Another favorite gift of mine is making homemade extracts. It takes a little while to “brew” (or “steep” or whatever the correct term is!) but it’s all hands-off time and the end result is well worth it.
Simply place your flavoring agent in a bottle or jar of vodka and leave in a dark, cool place to steep.
Shake the mixture every few days. Allow it to steep for at least a month, then decant into little jars or bottles and add a label.
Then it’s ready to gift!
Vodka is best for all extracts like mint, orange, almond, or lemon.
But for vanilla extract, I prefer to use spiced rum. It adds an extra vanilla-y boost to the final product.
I’ve gifted this last minute, as well, by including a little note that says: This bottle of extract will be ready to use on _______.
It’s a great way to quickly make a last minute gift!
Here’s a tutorial on how to make homemade extracts from The Stay at Home Chef.
Enjoy Giving Your Handmade Gifts
It’s all worth it to give a gift made with love to a person you love. Even if you’ve never made anything before, one small handmade gift can mean more than a store-bought one.
As a gardener, when my garden is generous, I want to pay it forward and share that abundance with others as well. Turning garden harvests into gifts is a way I can share my joy and love of gardening with the people I love.
I hope these garden-inspired gift ideas inspire you to create and pass along your own garden blessings this season.