Creative Gifts for Creative Friends (and Everyone) on Your Holiday List!

Do you have a few creative and crafty peeps on your gift list? An artist, chef, baker, crafter? Or someone who just likes pretty things? If so, this list is for you! It just so happens that many of these items here are made or sold by friends and family. (But I am only sharing items I truly love!)

In my previous gift guides I focused on combining basic items to create homemade kits (see below for links to those posts). Books are one of my favorite gifts to give (and receive!) and if I want to make the gift of a book more personal/unique/custom, I’ll assemble a kit or a themed group of gifts inspired by it, and wrap it up together. It is super helpful to use a great book as a jumping off point!

This first kit is for a couple of teenagers on my list but would be great for any adult. My older son and a few young friends have stopped eating red meat (and started enjoying cooking) so I’ll be wrapping up my friend Jenny Rosenstrach’s excellent book, The Weekday Vegetarians with a cute apron and a little cutting board! (Why do I love small cutting boards so much?!)

- The Weekday Vegetarians is one of my favorite cookbooks, not only for it’s yummy and accessible recipes but also for the tips and strategies, including the best mix-and-match meal chart!
- The pretty yellow apron is from my big brother’s new home textile company, Pookie Home, hooray!!

ps- I’m a sucker for wrapping gifts with pretty candy, like these these yellow candy canes !

This next book-themed gift is for the little ones! My friend Melinda Beck’s cute board book, We Are Shapes, explores themes of teamwork and resilience. Square, rectangle, triangle, circle, squiggly and lumpy all work together to build something! I will be wrapping it up with a shape-themed toy, like this wooden shape-sorter! (Wooden blocks are another great option!)

Beautiful and smartly designed, The Carbon Almanac (edited by founder Seth Godin) is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change. As author Cory Doctorow wrote: “An approachable, hopeful guide to a subject that is otherwise paralyzingly scary. A tonic for inaction and a bid to save our species and the only planet capable of sustaining it in the entire universe.”
I’m giving this book with a with a few earth-friendly items to help with a more sustainable lifestyle:
- cotton netted market bag
- set of reusable stainless steel drinking straws
Other ideas: a countertop compost bin ( I have this one and love it, it doesn’t get stinky!) or Bee’s Wrap reusable beeswax food wrap

Moving on to non-kit gift ideas, my sister- and brother-in-law’s online shop Wms&Co. is an incredible resource for beautiful and practical objects for the desk and home. I have that pretty red tape dispenser and I’m obsessed with it. It was a splurge, but as I am ripping little pieces of tape all day with one hand, I think of this weighty dispenser as my studio assistant! I also have the small black scissors, another item I use all day every day. They’re perfect for detail-cutting, and they’re also so pretty! Next on my wish list is their Letters & Numbers Rubber Stamp Set. I prefer to stamp messages on my handmade cards to using my own handwriting and it is hard to find stamp sets in nice fonts, especially large ones like these!

Keeping it in the family (I warned you!), these posters are from my brother David’s amazing new-ish online shop Design Reklama. David lived in Europe after college and amassed an incredible personal collection of vintage travel brochures which he has turned into these beautiful posters. I LOVE the idea of gifting a poster from a place you have traveled to with your loved one. I have my eye on this one for my husband in honor of our honeymoon!

Two of my favorite shops are great resources for creative gifts: Purl Soho for gorgeous yarn, knitting supplies and kits, fabric, like this learn-to-knit kit, and tons more. Fair Play Projects sells the CUTEST toys and crafty tools and kits, like this felt name banner kit.

And while I have you here, a quick plug for two of my craft books :), Candy Aisle Crafts and Paper Goods Projects, both great to wrap up with crafty supplies! Specific combo ideas for these gift kits can be found in my first post about book gift kits!

Make sure to check out my previous gift kit guides for more ideas:
DIY GIFT KITS FOR CREATIVE AND CRAFTY KIDS 1
DIY GIFT KITS 2
DIY IMAGINATIVE PLAY GIFT KITS
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Note that some links may be affiliate links (See below)