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

kaisstuff

last year was a really tough year for money until i found this site so i bought 10 shiny foil gift boxes from ebay and gave to all my friends & relatives filled with love !!!!!!!!! a priceless gift. :happyhear :happyhear :xmastree: merry xmas !

Lillibet_2

Last year I made my Dad a "family" scarf. I just knitted a long stripey scarf using
Purple : Dad's favourite colour
Yellow : Because my Mum insists on always being the yellow marker in board games as it was her "team" at school
Blue : To represent his 1 year old grandson
Green : For my husband (who adores my dad & likewise) as he is an ecologist & always dressed in green for work (I say it's like living with a shrub!)
Red : For me becuase I am passionate about my family.

Every time he wears it he says he thinks of all of us.

If you want to learn to knit then a scarf is the ideal thing as it is really really easy (honestly), being hand made it has a personal touch, you can emblish it any way you like, maybe by cross-stitching names or a message onto it, adding beads or sequins for a woman, ribons for tassles etc. If you are a sew-er rather than a knitter you could easily sew a fabric version instead. If knitting & sewing are totally beyond you then how about a tye-dye or batik version? You don't even have to restrict yourself to just a few colours, you could have a technicolor scarf with 30 different stripes, one for every member of the family, or just a 2 colour scarf for a couple. The variations are endless;)

Cost : £1 shops sell balls of wool for ...well, £1 each and I found 5 balls of wool enough to make 2 long scarves with tassles so £2.50 each. Charity shops are even cheaper, and many knitters have oddments of wool laying around at home which they are willing to pass on for free!

HTH:D

Photo of Spud modelling the scarf : http://s51.photobucket.com/albums/f352/Lillibet123/?action=view&current=DSCN36290001Spudscarf.jpg

karanpuma10

Golf Monthly Magazine
Buy it
£1.00 - (Usually £11) 90% off
Buy your husband or wife a subscription of Golf Monthly - 3 months worth for £1.00
The website is shown below.

http://www.magazine-group.co.uk/magazine-group/categories/sport-and-leisure/3862937/golf-monthly.thtml

cowgirlbex

Name of present? Luxury Christmas Hamper
Do you make it or buy it? Make and buy
Total Cost? Less than a fiver - you can make it as cheaply as you like
Details (the more the better)
You can fill the hamper with anything that you like - we have made some chutney and put some nice labels on, we're also baking Christmas cookies, Biscotti and a Panettoni for everyone. We're making boxes (just like at school!) for each of these and decorating them. We're then going to personalise each hamper with something - I've knitted an MP3 cover for my sister, we got some old library books for 10p each for someone else and we're giving another relative 4 of his favourite beers. It's fantastic fun!

To make the hamper itself get yourself some cardboard boxes - we're using old paper boxes from work - and wrap them in brown paper (or wrapping paper, if you wish). Then "garnish" them with some holly or pine (or both) and write a label for the top. Honestly, it looks soooo good! Inside the hamper you can put in some straw, shredded paper etc to make it more fun when they dig around.

You really can make this for virtually free if you so wish, the more you make of the biscuits etc the cheaper they are per unti (economoies of scale!)

oojeyboojey

• Name of present? Hero Worship Photo
  
• Make it or buy it? Make it
• Total Cost? less than £2: assuming you already have the software on your computer, it costs as much as the ink and paper and picture frame (£1 from Poundland, or sometimes less from Poundstretcher, the Range, or Bitz)
• Details:

First, find a suitable photo of your loved one (a sillouhette of them standing against a monotone background is best, but you could use several different ones and see which works) - scan the photo/s into your computer. Next, locate an online picture of your loved-one's hero, and save it to your desktop (make sure it's not copyrighted!).

Now comes the fiddly part - use Paint or similar software to cut and paste the image of your loved one into the photo of their hero. You may have to re-size the image first. Then print off the picture and frame it.

If you don't have paint, you could always print off the picture of the hero, and manually cut and paste with glue and scissors, then re-scan the finished product, but this is a bit more expensive (about 50p more!)

A more professional way of producing the photo would be to use an online photo printing service - http://www.snapfish.co.uk/registration has 30 free prints for new customers then 10p per print thereafter.

Other variations include putting the photographed head of your loved one on a picture of someone else's body to humorous effect.

Here is an example of me with one of my heros:

RoseStevo

Did this last year for my boyfriend and he loved it!

Name of present: Personalised Comic Strip
Make or buy: Both!
Total cost: About £3 (Printing + Frame)
Details:
Decide on a story for the comic strip including the recipient as the superhero. Collect some pictures together, if you only have hard copies of the pictures you will have to scan them. If this person had a 'Facebook' account you can just downloads pics from there.
Use MS Publisher, PowerPoint or Word (Whichever one you can use the best) to create little boxes and copy a picture for each part of the story into each box. You can download a 'comic stip' font (just search in google) and type into little text boxes in the corner of the pictures to explain the story. Look at some old comics for inspiration! Add a title in some funky font. Get it printed on about A3 size paper (Cost about £1) and stick it in a frame (Ebay/Wilko/Tesco etc about £2) and there you go!

Last year the comic I made was:
'The adventures of GedbobJimbo (Boyfriend - real name Ged!) and his trusty side kick - SuperRose (Me) The storyline was we went on an adventure looking for 'the best rocks around' (we're both climbers) and despite our plan being hijacked by the evil Lord Chicken Legs (our friend Rob) we were heros in the end!

All very silly but good fun, the comic still has pride of place in my boyfriends house!

AndrewMartin

• Name of present: Scratchcards!
• You buy it.
• Total Cost: £1+

I appreciate this might not be entirely keeping within the spirit of the thread, but I was bought a bunch of scratchcards, bets and a lottery ticket a few years ago. It cost a handful of pounds, but there was some real fun in seeing if they paid off (one of them did for £10!), especially when you've not made the initial payment.

How about buying the recipient a £5 flutter on their home football team for the game soonest after Xmas day?

Of course, any winnings may come back your way, so a lucky lottery choice could cost as little as -£1,000,000!

ilovelillbj

Name of present? Dairy
Do you make it or buy it? Make the contents, buy the book
Total Cost? Up to £5 for a plain lined book + time
Details (the more the better) I made this for my boyfriend last year, although a girlfriend would be absolutely chuffed with this present! I kept a diary of the good times (and a few bad) over the course of 10 months and wrote it all up into a nice book for his christmas present. It blew him away and he even said heliked having a few not so good bits as it was mor 'real'. It doesn't have to be that long a period of time or even a full diary- you could have short entries with photos of dates etc to make a scrapbook with a twist.


Name of present? Messages from home
Do you make it or buy it? Make it
Total Cost? £3 for a tesco scrapbook photo album
Details (the more the better) My grandmother has just moved to India so for her present i'm making a photo album with pictures from her leaving do and getting all the members of the family to add a little message for them.

sianiliz

• Name of present? Paint your own
• Do you make it or buy it? Buy it
• Total Cost? Under £5
• Details (the more the better)? I bought a paint your own breakfast set. It comes with everything that's needed to do it, and seems simple enough. It cost me £3.99 from the Works, since buying it i've seen similar kits for mugs etc in places like Wilkinson.

dangelis

• Name of present? PERSONALISED JIGSAW PUZZLE
• Make it or buy it? Buy It!
• Total Cost? £4.99
• Details 15 piece wooden A5 Jigsaw Puzzle. The perfect gift for your loved ones, people especially love a picture of themselves! A unique christmas gift and at very little expenditure. You upload the photo, they do the rest! Go to: http://www.fabulousphotogifts.co.uk/index.php?ref=15_piece_wooden_bulk