Easter Gifts on a Budget: Creating Homemade Gifts with Common Items Around Your Home

With so many of us out of work money is tight; this makes it more important than ever to use our creativity when coming up with Easter gifts for our family. Whether looking for Easter basket fillers or a small gift for your niece or nephew, before heading to the store, take a look around your house. If you have items such as pencils, cloth, tissue paper, or pompoms chances are good you can make some great gifts without out spending a dime.

School age kids love little items like pencils, erasers and stickers, so this should be your first stop. Pencils can be decorated in a variety of different ways. Find a printable Easter pattern online and print off a page with matte photo paper, cut the paper the length of the pencil and wide enough to wrap completely around it. Glue the paper to the pencil and let dry. You can purchase cute Easter erasers at the Dollar Tree 12 for $1 to top your pencils with.

All Free Crafts has instructions to make toppers for pencils using pompoms. You will need an assortment of pompoms in various sizes, chenille stems, and movable eyes for this project, chances are good if you are a crafty family you will already have these items on hand.

Add some printable stickers from stickers and charts a few color pages from around the internet and with a bit of homemade candy you have a totally homemade Easter basket.

Instead of buying a stuffed bunny why not make your own? All Free Crafts has an adorable bunny made from several different size pom poms, use extra large pompoms available at craft stores to make bigger bunnies. You can also make your own pompoms by wrapping yarn around a piece of cardboard, you will want to use a fair amount of yarn depending on the size of the pompom you are trying to make. Then pull the loops of yarn off the card and tie them tightly in the middle. Cut the loops and trim your "ball" to the size you want. You can unravel the yarn some to give it that fluffy look that pompoms have a comb works well for this or anything else with a sharp point.

Speaking of Easter baskets why not make your own? All Free Crafts as a very simple but elegant pattern for a homemade paper Easter basket. The pattern is simple enough you could draw one on a larger piece of paper like poster board if you wanted a bigger basket than the one shown there.

Once you have made the basket, look around the house for things to decorate it with. Torn pieces of tissue paper in different colors and layered on top of each other, makes a lovely and colorful background. Sponges and paint can provide soft pastel colors. Another good cover for your basket might be scrap pieces of cloth glued onto the poster board.

Hunt around the house for silk flowers, plastic gems, sequins, cording, trim, stickers, pompoms or chenille stems to decorate your basket with. Use your imagination; you can use tissue paper to make beautiful flowers by winding strips of tissue paper around itself and twisting it at the bottom.

Once you have your basket you can fill it up with your bunny,pencils, stickers, and some homemade treats, tuck a couple of coupons in for things such as a movie and popcorn or trip to the park. Your child will be thrilled and you will have spent little or no money for your beautiful homemade Easter gifts.

Sources: http://www.allfreecrafts.com
http://www.stickersandcharts.com