Looking for some homemade Christmas gift ideas? You’ve come to the right place! I’ve got ten great ideas here for fun, easy, and inexpensive DIY Christmas Gifts for everybody on your list 🙂
Handmade Soap
Cold process soap is reasonably easy to make, and there’s no end to what you can do with it. Once you’ve got the basics you’re set to whip up a room full of soap for every gift-giving occasion. Keep in mind that soap does need 3–4 weeks to age before use, though, so be sure to get started on your Christmas soap sooner rather than later. Here’s my Christmas soap recipes from the last few years—you’re sure to find something that catches your eye!
- Snowdrift Soap
- Christmas Stripe Soap
- Candy Cane Soap
- Hot Chocolate Soap
- Pumpkin Pie Soap
- Blizzard Soap
- Cranberry Sauce Soap
Warming Spiced Sugar Scrub
This lovely holiday-spiced sugar scrub comes together in a jiffy and looks lovely in a mason jar with some pretty ribbon. If you don’t like gingerbread, check out my peppermint and cocoa sugar scrub as an alternative.
Rocky Mountain Foot Butter
This fresh, clean body butter is just lovely for tired toes, and is just the thing for an at-home pedicure. If you know anyone who loves to walk and hike, this tingly foot butter will be right at home in their stocking.
Christmas Bath Bombs
Perfect for bath lovers everywhere, these fizzy Christmas scented treats are fantastic for stocking stuffers.
White Chocolate Body Frosting
This decadent whipped body frosting smells downright divine. It’s so white-chocolatey your mouth will probably water as you whip up a batch for all the chocolate lovers in your family.
Candy Cane Body Lotion
I’m in love with this pretty, striped lotion. Not only does it smell wonderful, but it leaves the skin soft and hydrated. Mmmm.
Creamy Cocoa Body Truffles
These beautiful little nuggets look downright edible, so I recommend warning your recipients before they accidentally chow down. With peppermint laced unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada) cores and a smooth cocoa coating, they’re fantastic little skin treats.
Lip Balm
Lip balm is a perennial and easy gift giving favourite. It’s so easy to lose that everybody always seems to need a new tube, and I’ve got lots of recipes for everybody on your list.
Tiger Balm
For that person on your list who loves to push their limits in their work outs, tiger balm is perfect for sore muscles. The homemade version is also wonderfully free of petroleum byproducts!
Bandits Oil
A bottle of homemade Bandits Oil makes a great gift for friends who are interested in natural cleaning and healing. Accompanied by a short list of possible uses, they’ll be sure to put it good use, and will appreciate not having to purchase the five or so essential oils required to make your own right off the bat.
And, of course, if nothing here strikes your fancy I’ve got well over 650 recipes online for you to peruse. There’s also last year’s entry on the same topic 🙂
All I have to say is thank goodness I am leaving for my holidays soon! Otherwise I’d not have any money buying all the ingredients for these recipes!!! But I do know when I get back? Those truffles and the candy cane lotion are being made first things! I must admit, I did buy oodles of pump bottles to try out more of your recipes!
Happy creating!
I tell myself all the ingredients are for gifts, haha… Enjoy looking forward to all your future DIYing 🙂 I can’t wait to hear what you think when you give everything a go!
Do melt and pour soaps need to age too or only cold pressed? I am new to soap making and thanks to you and one of your excellent articles on lye, I am no longer scared of it. I worked for a woman who wouldn’t use lye, but from what I gathered, it seems like she ended up needing to use chemicals anyway in her soaps in place of the lye… Sodium laryl sulfates I believe..? And from what I’ve been reading… The melt and pours all seem to have the sodium hydroxide anyway…. I’m so glad I came across your lye article! I was exhausting myself trying to find soap recipes that did not require it. Thank you!
Hi Traci! A melt and pour soup shouldn’t really need to age as the base is ready to use when it comes. You age CP soap to let excess water evaporate out, and there shouldn’t be a bunch of excess water in a M&P base.
You are right that pretty much all M&P bases were made with lye, and then many of them have added chemical surfactants like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. If the base wasn’t originally made by combining fats with lye, then it’s basically just a bar of detergent… definitely not an improvemnt!
Such great ideas! I recently made a homemade body butter (smells like an Andes peppermint candy…mmmm) that I’ve been thinking to make as Christmas gifts for my friends, but it’s greasy on application… Not sure if they’ll like it.
Have you made body butters for friends? If so, did they care about the greasiness?
Thanks for your awesome ideas and creativity! Been slowly trying to come up with my own recipes! Been a fun journey thus far! Good learning experience!
Hi Lex! I have gifted body butter to friends and family before, and I’ve found education to be really necessary—explain that it’s pure oils/butters, and that they should apply it sparingly. If they apply it like lotion, they’re generally a bit put off by how oily/greasy it is, so you just need to show them the way 🙂 Making the body butter a bit harder with some wax (so it’s hard to get too much in hand and over-apply) also helps.
Thanks for reading & DIYing with me!
I’m hoping to do an entirely handmade holiday this year. All of these ideas and recipes are perfect… Thank you!
Thanks, Caitlin! Enjoy all your hand-making 😉
Thank gods I’ve gotten my workmates their goodies done. Now it’s onto the family. *grins* Lip balms, body butters, body sprays and more. What’s more fun, my other sister who lives in another state has gotten on board. *cackles evilly* That means the two of us are now making these lovely goodies. She’s started making the bath bomb fizzies, since she knows me and patience with those things…not so good. LOL But I can whip things to death to make lovely fluffy butters–whereas she has a 4 year old who wants to know what’s going on. Yes, this should be an interesting Christmas this year. I’ve been designated the balm maker since I’ve been doing it for a while. She’s done the soap, so she gets to do it until I decide I can actually handle it. But I’m determined to figure out lotion. I wanna do lotion. 😀
Exciting! I love a good homemade Christmas 🙂 I have a corner dedicated to piles of gifts for people, and there are a lot of tubes of lip balm and bars of soap in those piles 🙂
Almost everything my daughter and I are giving is from your site (and my signature hot cocoa mix, a sugar scrub I use, and the mugs she is personalizing for each of our recipients). I really love being able to home-made my Christmas. It seems like a nice touch for the recipient, and I’m happy to take the off-ramp from the corporate materialistic craziness that is American Christmas. Your recipes are so great, I feel this year like I really can hand-make “good enough” gifts. So thank you.
Our list this year is peppermint cocoa lip balm, mocha lip balm. gingerbread lip balm, “Christmas Cookie Sugar Scrub” (coconut oil, epsom salt, sugar, more vanilla extract than is reasonable), room sprays, small bottles of lotion (especially the antibacterial stuff), and masks and serums. Good stuff. Plus? I feel I have to make ahead and test it. So I HAVE to make stuff for myself. I’m a martyr like that.
I’m so thrilled my recipes are a part of your Christmas this year 🙂 Thanks so much for DIYing with my and spreading the homemade love! And keep being a martyr 😉