The Non-Crafter's DIY Holiday Gift Guide

We love the Christmas season- particularly giving gifts to the people we love. Nothing is more fun and heartwarming than watching someone you care about open a present you sought out just for them! We firmly believe that during the season of giving, it’s not about how MUCH you spend on someone, but the thought behind the gift that really counts. That’s good too, because the Ginger and Blonde aren’t made of money. Not only are we not made of money, but you’d probably just find dust and old receipts inside our wallets. That sure doesn’t stop us from wanting to treat those we love to some dope gifts. So we sometimes need to get creative in our gift giving. Now, take note- we did NOT say we ARE creative; we said we have to GET creative. Thank the Lord for Pinterest and all the DIY craft people out there who are blazing the trail for us. They are serious lifesavers.  We decided there have to be other people out there like us, who are also on a budget, but want to give a thoughtful gift. Furthermore, they also have very little creative crafting talent and not a whole lot of time to get that Ish done. Are we speaking to your spirit? Well then, this post is for you.

So here we have created a roundup of our favorite inexpensive DIY gifts for the holidays. We aren’t listing DIY crafts that take LOTS of skill or time. We sure wouldn’t put together a list of hard DIY crafts for you all. We’re all about honesty and transparency; so there is no way we’d be attempting the difficult stuff. Which means we won’t recommend it to you either. Many of these gifts we have actually made, so we assure you- even the simplest of folk (us) can complete and/or at least attempt these crafts. We know it’s only November, but if you’re non-crafters like us, you may need the whole month of December to get all your gifts together, and possibly more than one shot at the DIY ones. May the crafting odds be ever your favor...

We are attempting this foiled pencil cup this week since it’s adorable. It’s one of the few we haven’t tried, but picked out because there are four total supplies and it can’t be too tough, right?! Updates on the finished product to come…

**UPDATE** Alright. Well, as per usual when these non-crafters craft, we learned quite a bit when we attempted the foiled pencil cup (as we promised). First of all, the tutorial states simply “spray paint the glass cup and let it dry”, as though that’s an easy task that all people know how to do. We assumed this would be a piece of cake. Epic fail (as pictured below). Ol Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum over here just stood outside trying to figure out how to spray paint a cup. Do we sit it face down? If we do, then won’t the top look funny because it won’t be painted? If we hold it, then how do we turn it to get all angles and not cover ourselves in spray paint? We definitely needed an adult there to help us. We ended up putting Walmart sacks over our hands and putting our hands inside the cups and basically spray painting ourselves as we tried to cover the glass too. Like we said, epic fail. So we got online and googled “how to spray paint glass without getting angry”. It’s a real thing and there was a real answer. Check it out here. This blogger/crafter calls it like she sees it and that’s why we love her. “After the jar is misted, walk the hell away and let it dry”. Truer words have not been spoken. So if you attempt this craft, start with the paint tutorial BEFORE the cup tutorial; or do what we did next and buy a pre-painted white cup instead. Genius. Now that we had the pre-painted cups (crisis averted), we could move forward with the tape and foil steps. Now that OUGHT to be the easy stuff. Again, leave it to Dumb and Dumber to screw that up too. Below are pictures of our first attempt with the tape. Just put the tape on in random, abstract lines. How do you mess that up? Well, we will tell you. You put a bunch of tape strips all over your cup so it seems that it is going to be precious, only to realize that you should have been removing the non-stick side of the tape before putting another strip on top of it. Seriously, we really need EVERY detail spelled out for us. Also possibly brain camp. There goes attempt #2. But, FINALLY, we got it right: pre-painted (or clear) cups, put tape strips on correctly (one strip at a time), and then foil the thing. VOILA! We made the gold foiled cups. We told you we were non-crafters. Believe us now? This is why we created this post with the whole month of December ahead of you. If you’re like us, then it’s going to take you three attempts to get the craft right and then you have one gift, but now just 10 more gifts to go. Lord, help us.

Foiled Pencil Cup

Include their favorite pens or makeup brushes to really add pizzazz!

Lime Mint Foot Soak

With FREE labels- WHAT?!

#Treatdemfeet

Literally, any kind of body scrub! Here are some of our favorites:

For the food lovers:

Bacon Salt

Think Bloody’s, popcorn, eggs, OH MY!

We know money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy bacon which is basically the same thing, right?!

Ideas just for the DUDES:

If all else fails and you’re left with crafts that look like they were made by a small child- we say GIFT ‘EM ANYWAY! It’s the thought that counts, right?