How to Make Inexpensive Christmas Presents

If you're looking for ideas on how to make inexpensive Christmas presents, you're not alone. With the economy in shambles, everyone is looking for creative ways to make the most of their household budget. Homemade reed diffusers are Christmas inexpensive gifts you can give to friends, family, neighbors, and other special people during the holiday season.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Choose bottles for your inexpensive Christmas presents. Ideally, you want to look for a clear glass container with a fairly narrow opening and an interesting shape. If you have a thrift store nearby, try to find an old spice rack. You can get 20-30 bottles for just a few dollars.

2. Decorate your bottles using scrapbooking rub-ons or clear stickers. For the holidays, you can use Santa, snowmen, gingerbread cookie, snowflake, or Christmas tree designs. General flowers or geometric patterns would also work if you want the reed diffuser to be something that can be enjoyed year round.

3. Fill each bottle about 2/3 of the way full with equal parts fragrance oil, vegetable oil, and a small amount of cheap vodka. Vanilla, cranberry, pine, or cinnamon are all good choices for a Christmas reed diffuser, but you can experiment with other scents if you like. One of the advantages of choosing homemade reed diffusers as Christmas inexpensive gifts is that you're free to play around a bit with your selections.

4. Purchase a package of bamboo chopsticks or skewers. Cut the sticks so they are three to five inches taller than your bottle. The number of sticks you'll need for each reed diffuser varies according to the size of the bottle and how strong you want your fragrance to be. However, six to ten sticks for each of your inexpensive Christmas presents is usually sufficient.

5. Print up a card on your computer explaining how to use a reed diffuser. Some key points to remember: make sure both ends of the sticks are covered in oil before using your reed diffuser, keep the bottle on a shelf away from pets and small children, and rotate the sticks every three or four days to refresh the fragrance.

6. Tie the sticks to the diffuser bottle with a pretty ribbon. Stick the bottle and the instructions in a small gift bag for Christmas inexpensive gifts that are sure to earn rave reviews.

[dreamteller]

on 11/16/2009 How to Make Inexpensive Christmas Presents is a fun, easy idea. I'm adding this to my favorites, and giving it 5 stars!

[xrayness]

on 7/22/2009 Another talented writer on eHow...thanks for sharing your knowledge.