ArtFire's Official Blogger Blog

If you your passion lays in cooking, you might try baking a festive treat for friends and family. Christmas sweets and candies tend to be a big hit in any crowd, whether they come in the form of yummy stocking stuffers or a delicious snack to munch on. Try giving peppermint bark or frosted cookies to family members, friends, or co-workers as x-mas gifts this year. Or if cooking isn’t your area of expertise, you could try packaging ingredients in fun jars as a kind of “future cooking project” and distributing them as presents!

For the visually minded artisan, try making a special family photo album or recipe book. These gifts are full of shared experiences and memories and can make for a treasured possession. You can also try crafting up a fun scrapbook, showing a recent event or trip you took with family or friends.

Tree decorations make for a delightful holiday gifts, plus you can have a fun time just making them! Handmade ornaments can be crafted out of old art supplies or goodies you might have laying around the house like beads, buttons, fabric, salt dough, even old light bulbs! Get creative and experiment, the more expressive your ornaments are, the better. Make special decorations for everyone, maybe even matching them to fit that person’s character. Or if you’re feeling especially inventive, craft mini versions of your family members or friends as gifts!

If you like working with your hands when you craft, you could try making fun seasonal candles as special holiday gifts. If you lack experience making candles, just buy a low-price kit from a nearby craft store. These kits usually produce a handful of candles, so you only need a few kits to craft enough gifts for everyone on your list! Add embellishments to your presents to make them festive and unique. Mix crushed flowers into your wax before letting it cool, Mold your candle into an unusual shape, or paint on festive patterns!

Thanks for reading, and remember to buy handmade this holiday season!

-Sara

But there is a solution for these shoppers this Black Friday. There’s no need to rush to the shopping mall and fight off fellow customers—you can stay at home. This year, make the decision to do your holiday shopping in your PJs and bathrobe by shopping online.

When you shop online, you get access to a greater variety of products than you would find at even the grandest shopping center. But you also get the opportunity buy handmade gifts for your loved ones from hardworking crafters.

With the global financial situation getting more and more bleak all the time, most shoppers are just not interested in supporting artists as much as they are in saving a few bucks. But in this bad economy, it is more important than ever before to shop handmade.

When you shop handmade, you get the chance to help real individuals who are struggling to get by in this financial crisis just like you. It’s your decision, do you want to help a skilled artist pay his/her mortgage, or do you want to fill the pockets of a rich corporate executive?

Shopping handmade is especially important for fellow craft artisans. Their businesses are supported by people shopping based on a style and quality rather than price alone. It is important that you help support fellow artists’ shops this holiday season.

So avoid the chaos of Black Friday and buy handmade online this year!

-Sara

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