Shrinky Dinks Art

Great for kids and adults alike, Shrinky Dinks allow you to draw or cutout custom designs at a larger scale and shrink them down to a smaller size while maintaining the detail and durability (10-inch square piece shrinks down to a 4.25-inch square when complete). You or your little ones can use this to make jewelry, pins or a variety of other accessories to share with friends and family.

Customized Ceramic Dishes

Another great family DIY gift activity involves a Pebeo Porcelaine 150 China Paint Fine Tip Marker and plain ceramic dishes. The marker allows you to draw on the dishes to add your own personalization. You can freehand your designs or use pre-cut stencils found online. If you make a mistake while drawing, no worries, the ink from the marker can be washed away within 72 hours. For an enameled finish, after allowing 24 hours for the ink to dry, bake your creations in an oven set to 300 degrees for 35 minutes. Once baked, your design additions will be safe to wash (even in a dishwasher) and eat or drink off of.

DIY lip balm

Give your loved ones the custom flavored lip balm of your own design. By mixing a few ingredients you can give completely custom scented and flavored lip balms that will have your friends and family asking for more. For this you will need, a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio mix of coconut oil, raw, unrefined shea butter and beeswax pastilles (pellets) as the base you add the essential oil(s) of your choosing to.

A teaspoon each of the coconut oil, shea butter and beeswax will give you a small tin worth of balm, which should be enough for one person. To start, you pour the 1-1-1 mix in a glass bowl and set the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Begin to stir the mix until they have all melted together and proceed to remove the pan from the stove with the bowl still over the water. Leave the bowl over the water (to prevent it from hardening too soon) as you add in a couple drops of the essential oil of your choosing. Continue stirring until mixed and flavoring is to your liking before transferring to the final container with a dropper. After an hour of cooling, the custom lip balm should be fully ready to go. Experiment with mixing different oils to achieve new flavors, but be sure to write down the mix so you’ll be ready when the balm recipients come looking for more.