Festive Fivers Competition: The best Xmas pressies for under £5

alison6692

Name of present?


'Paint Your Own Frame and Heart Shaped Box' Set

Do you make it or buy it?

Buy it

Total Cost?

£4.95

Details (the more the better)





Where possible please add a link if it's an online offer

CLICK

:T

niknakb

Name: Festive fruit vodka

Make it or buy it: Make it!

Cost: £3.50

Details: Make your own vodka in any fruit flavour you like. very esy to do,makes a lovely personalised present and anything similar int he shops costs a fortune!

Buy a small bottle of vodka, tip it out into another container. Soak the bottle to remove the label or you can use a more attractive bottle if you'd rather. You can buy really cheap vodka from Lidl or even tesco for about £3. You are going to add flavour to it anyway so no need for a top quality brand.

Fill the bottle with 1 quatre sugar and three quatres vodka (you can drink the rest!) and shake it or stir it so it mixes up and the sugar starts to disolve.

Next you need some friut. You can choose any fuit you like. If you go to Tesco at around 8pm they start to reduce items. This is when Igo to get my bargins. See what friut you can find or just keep your eyes open for offers.

Cut the fruit to size and add it to the vodka. You will need to leave it in a cool dark place for 3 weeks to get maximum flavour so perfect timing for xmas.

To make the bottle personalised, make your own label and gift tag to add to the bottle.

niknakb

Name of present: Kitsch handmade jewellery

Make it or buy it? Make it

Total cost: Nothing if you're smart, but maybe the cost of the chain (10p from hardware store)

Details: Handmade jewellery made from items that you find around the house. Kitsch, unique jewellery is really popular at the moment so why not make your own. This year I will be making jewellery for my friends using things like scrabble tiles, alphabet fridge magnets, barbie shoes, dice and dominos. All you need to do is find something that looks cool and put it on a chain. I use sink plug chain or the chain you use for ID cards. It can be bought in any hardware shop for about 20p a meter and can be cut to size with scissors.

This may sound crazy but it really works and teenagers love it! I've seen designs similar to mine in shops selling for about 15 pounds!

trace_567

Apologies if this one should already have been said. I can't remember having seen it.

Name of present? Cookie jar
Make it or buy it? Both
Total cost? No more than £5, cheaper or more expensive depending on what you choose.

Details:
Buy a jar suitable for biscuits/cookies to be stored it. Preferably an air tight jar. The jar can really be as cheap or expensive as you like. You may even have something already at home that would be suitable to reuse. Sadly this one at wilkinson is out of stock on line, might be in your local store though. http://www.wilkinsonplus.com/invt/0141658 or you could check your local woolworths, pound shops anywhere really. You just need to find something suitable to store biscuits.
Find a recipe for some biscuits/cookies of your choice. Then pop them in the jar. Put some christmas ribbon round the jar, or decorate however you like.
If your no good at cooking, you could always just buy some nice biscuits and pop them in instead

You could do something similar with mince pies. Find a suitable container. Make it look pretty/festive etc and fill it with your homemade mince pies.

ukchriss

:j

Name of present? Personal cushions
Make it or buy it? Make it
Total Cost? £1 each
Details

Last year when my mum asked me to take some of her old clothes to the rubbish tip, I took them home and cut them up to make her some cushions. all they cost me was 99p each for a pad to put inside.
She thought they were great as they reminded her of all the places she had gone to in the clothes bringing back some happy memorys.


http://www.coatscrafts.co.uk/Crafts/Patchwork+and+quilting/Projects/Patchwork+and+Quilting+Project+-+Crazy+Patchwork+Cushion.htm

http://www.wilkinsonplus.com/invt/0068436

jetrox

• Name of present? BUSINESS CARDS/T-SHIRT/POSTCARDS
• Do you make it or buy it? BUY IT
• Total Cost? I PAID £4.44 BUT COULD BE CHEAPER
• Details (the more the better) go to the website www.vistaprint.com and go onto the uk site. They have a permenant offer of free business cards (100 for £3.21 shipping-says it takes 21 days but is always quicker). you can pick your own design and have whatever you want writtern on them-this would be a great present for anyone self employed or anyone who could benefit from appointment cards etc. Once you have ordered free business cards then you will recieve at least 3 emails a week offereing more freebies-yesterday i ordered 100 postcards, 100 business cards and A FREE T-SHIRT of my own design for £4.44. You can upload your own design for the t-shirt and add your own pictures and text ( i did one for my mum with a picture of her 2 dogs on and my boys writtern underneath it). Although you can only have one free t-shirt at a time you WILL keep getting emails to order more and all for just shipping costs.
• ideas for 100 free business cards: appointment cards, business cards,
• ideas for 100 free postcards-business adverts, birthday invites, you could put a nice saying on them and frame them in a cheap frame and give them as a present
• ideas for free t-shirt: absolutly anything!!!!
• Where possible please add a link if it's an online offer the web address is www.vistaprint.co.uk or could be .com sorry can't remember off hand! x

ukchriss

:j

Name of present? - Personal Crackers
Make it or buy it? - Make it
Total Cost? If freebies used — nothing!
Details

This year I have made some personal crackers for friends and family.
They can be made very cheaply with any gift paper and the inside of kitchen or toilet rolls, you can put your own jokes in and small gifts inside.
I have used a lot of the free samples which i got through the post from seeing them on here in the freebie section.

http://www.oldenglishcrackers.com/make-your-own-crackers.htm

:beer:

Larumbelle

• Name of present? Baby's bookworm book or Sixteen books to read before you're sixteen
  
• 
  
• Do you make it or buy it? Both - make the scrapbook, buy the books
• 
  
• Total Cost? The photo album I used cost 99p from the 99p shop. Other than that, it depends upon the books! - the cheapest I have used in this project was a freebie, the most I have paid to date is £3, but I am prepared to shell out £5, if I have to, for the right book
• 
  
• Details (the more the better) I thought this one up for my gorgeous new neice and nephew, both of whom will be celerating their first christmasses this year. I am reluctant to shell out on something that will be useless within three months or will join the mountain of 'baby things' that most new mums are already given in abundance.
• The main 'gift' is a little book I make of sixteen books I think the tot should read before he or she turns sixteen. The list should be tailored to your own opinions of what is a 'must-read' book and what you enjoyed yourself as a child. My list starts with Winnie the Pooh and ends with Orwell's 1984, taking in Roald Dahl and Harry Potter along the way. I have written a page about each book; when and where I first read it, what I loved about it, why I think they should read it, etc. I have typed these up and mounted them in a photo album, and decorated the pages with cut outs of the characters etc.
• Here's the clever part... sixteen years of Xmas gifts all worked out! Each year your Xmas gift is one of the books in your list. If you stick to classic books you can always pick them up cheaply, from charity shops, boot sales, second-hand book shops, Amazon sellers, The Book People website, ebay, and all the other places you can buy cheap books! Older editions of books can be a real bargain, you often get better quality binding for a fraction of what the paperback would cost from waterstones etc. You can inscribe the book with names and dates, but I hate writing in books so I make a little bookmark with these details instead. I pick the books up when I see them. I have a really nice hard-bound copy of 1984 that I picked up recently for 50p. It was only afterwards that I realised that I'll be 40 when I give it as a gift (and my seven week old niece will be 15!!!! scary thought!!!!).
• I think it's a great gift because it is of far more value than anything you can buy in a shop. As I think I already wrote, the most I have paid for a book including delivery so far is £3. You are passing on knowledge, hopefully a life-long joy of reading, and a small library to be added to. It's a gift that will hopefully be kept forever and will grow with the child. You spend time, which is far more valuable than money, and give the child a sense of what you were like when you were young, and give them a chance to know you a bit better - even help them to realise that you were a child once, too !!!!
  

jem1276

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Womens-Wit-2008-Mini-Calendar/dp/B000Y5L208/ref=sr_1_2/026-4713783-8469223?ie=UTF8&s=kitchen&qid=1194739217&sr=8-2

I got one of these last year and have loved reading each days!

intheblackfinally

Name of present? - Construction Kit / Building Blocks
Make it or buy it? - Make it
Total Cost? a few pence
Details:- Save all your empty toilet roll, kitchen roll holders, empty cardboard boxes from items such as toothpaste, soaps, oxo's etc, etc(in fact any smallish boxes you can get your hands on) and then paint them in different bright colours. You could cut some toilet rolls in half to make different sized tubes etc and it works best if there is a good variety of different sized boxes. Then put them all together in a large cardboard box and hey presto you have a box filled with items which kids can build loads of different things from and has only cost you a few pence for the paint (hint: if your boxes flaps need sticking down use masking tape to seal the ends as this can easily be painted over).

My little girl & I made a set of these blocks together yesterday and not only did she have great fun making them once they were dry we played for the rest of the day with them.

Just goes to show that nothing beats a cardboard box in a childs mind!!!