Every Christmas many mums struggle to afford gifts. They can purchase cheap knickknacks, but it is unlikely that they will be appreciated. They can scour second-hand shops and hope to get lucky by finding a few worthwhile pieces, but they shouldn’t depend on that plan. A great solution is to get crafty and make Christmas gifts for friends and family members.

Time, and not money, is the investment when it comes to crafted gifts. Everyone always appreciate something that you spent a great deal of time and energy creating. Crafted items are unique and heartfelt. Some women feel that giving people handmade items is cheap or tacky, but recipients often prefer meaningful gifts than expensive items purchased in stores. They know that genuine thought and care went into making the gifts.

Gifts can be even more special when they incorporate photographs. Photo albums are great gifts, especially since most people only use digital cameras these days. A mum who wants to make wonderful gifts that involve pictures should consider making photo books. There are many websites that make photo prints for small fees. This is good because there is no need to take pictures on real film in order to create physical photographs. Even older photos or those taken from social networking websites can be uploaded and then printed. These pictures can be glued into traditional photo albums or handmade decorated notebooks.

Gifts like this work better when there is some sort of theme involved and it doesn’t have to be grand or complicated, it just needs to provide a bit of direction. These themes work especially well for sisters, cousins and other female relatives who are likely to be sentimental.

Male relatives will favour gag gifts like photo mugs. The more out-of-context the picture is, the funnier the mug will be. Acquiring the photo could be tricky. An idea is to ask the guy’s mum or wife to provide a photo of when he was a baby. It will be tempting to choose the most embarrassing picture in an effort to be funny, but it could be risky as some people don’t take that kind of joke well. In this case, it is safer to choose a picture that depicts the man looking his best, even if it is not as funny as the embarrassing pictures.

Photo mugs can be ordered online. Once the picture is chosen, it can be uploaded to a website and printed onto a plain coffee mug. These companies usually manufacture mugs within one week after the order was placed. Enterprising crafters can be even thriftier by shellacking the photo onto a mug by hand.

Source by Chelsi Woolz