by Angela Hoy, publisher of WritersWeekly.com – featuring new freelance writing jobs and paying markets (for free!) every Wednesday!
Today’s article may be freely reprinted/redistributed in any medium as long as the entire article and bio are included.
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Looking for more great ideas? See
Holiday Magic – Free Gifts All Year Long at: http://www.booklocker.com/books/1298.html
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Well, on Saturday it will be November (already?!). And that means there’s less than a month until the holiday season begins! While Walmart has had their Christmas trees up for awhile now (do they ever take them down?), I’m just now getting around to making my list. And each year (while balancing my checkbook), I try to think of ways to turn my creativity into homemade (inexpensive) gifts.
To give you enough time to start on one or more of these projects, today I’m sharing some of my homemade holiday gift ideas. If you have any ideas like this that other budget-conscious writers can try, please let me know!
1. Grandma’s Coloring Book
This is an idea I came up with years ago and it’s always a hit! Choose the best photographs of your family taken from the past year. Tape them to 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper, two to a page, and have Kinkos or your local copy shop run black and white copies of them. (If you have a high-quality copier at home, you can probably copy them yourself, but you’ll need to lighten the settings.)
Hole punch the copies and bind them in floppy, plastic folders (paper ones tend to deteriorate over time), which can be found with the school supplies in most grocery and discount stores. Decorate the folders using stickers (or use your own creative flair!) to spell out “Grandma’s Coloring Book” (or Grandpa’s Coloring Book, Aunt Dot’s Coloring Book, etc.) on the cover. Let your children add their own decorations to the cover! Then, wrap the coloring book in wrapping paper along with a small box of crayons. Grandmothers (and all relatives) LOVE this present!
2. Personal Short Story
Write a fictional tale about a loved one, and make them the main character! Children as well as adults love to see themselves in a story or book. Now, for Richard (my sweetie), sometimes the personal tales I write for him have a ummm…romantic twist (where he meets a young maiden, always named Angela, of course, and well, you know… Heh…).
You can print these personal stories on thick, off-white parchment paper (or any paper at all!), roll them up, and bind them with ribbon, or even seal them with wax (melted crayons work better than candles!) for an extra special touch.
Hint: You can make them look really old by soaking them in a sink of tea and then drying them. The clothes dryer works for this (really!), but throw some dry towels in with it to keep the paper from sticking to the dryer walls, and keep an eye on it to avoid a fire! You can even frame these! Document-sized wooden frames at discount stores are very inexpensive.
You can also print your stories, formatted into two columns on landscape, and printed on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Turn your into a booklet and decorate the cover.
3. A Year in the Life…
I started this shortly before our 1st anniversary, and each year I add information from the previous year, so our “book” is now four chapters long (four years married!). In your book, briefly detail the events of your family’s (or you and your spouse’s, lover’s, partner’s) year together as a true story in book or chapter format. You can write in first- or third-person (I use third-person so it looks more like a story; not so much like an autobiography).
This makes a great memoir and can be added to each year. Photographs add a really nice touch! I use our color printer (so the photos look nice) and Ali (our daughter) designs a new cover for the new edition each year. Richard loves it and we read each new chapter together during our anniversary dinner while reminiscing about the previous year. In a few years, I’ll publish the entire volume as a hardcover family heirloom (through Booklocker.com, of course)!
4. Family Holiday Tabloid
In my opinion, this is, by far, the funnest homemade gift idea for writers to create! I was doing this before I even knew I’d be a professional writer! Instead of mailing out holiday greeting cards (or Christmas cards), create a family newsletter. But, rather than just providing an update on family matters, sensationalize the stories, add photos, and make each item appear as a tasty tabloid headline and story rather than just an annual update.
For example, when Max was born, instead of writing “The Hoys Welcome New Baby”, I would write “Bangor Mother Survives Birthing 10 Lb. Infant!” And, instead of “Frank Crashed His Bike but Didn’t Get Hurt”, I would write “10-Year-Old Walks Away From Bike/Auto Crash that Tore Bike in Half!” (That really did happen – Frank hit a PARKED car with his bike last year and it really did break in half.)
Use your home copier or printer, or, again, have your local copy shop print or copy your “tabloid” for you. If you print the tabloid on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper and take them to the copy shop, they can copy them onto 11 x 17 paper and fold them, tabloid/newsletter style, making them look like a small tabloid.
Careful…color copies are very expensive so you may want to put the color photos (if any) on one page only. I usually place all color photos on the cover and only have them copy the interior in black and white. You can, of course, have them copy in black and white throughout (no color at all), making this a very economical gift.
Treating family stories as dramatic tabloid headlines makes them so much more fun to write about, and a scream for family members who receive this terrific gift!
Please don’t forget to send me your creative (inexpensive!) gift ideas, too! See: http://www.writersweekly.com for contact info.
Angela Hoy is the co-owner of WritersWeekly.com and Booklocker.com. http://www.writersweekly.com – the FREE marketing emag for writers featuring new freelance jobs and PAYING MARKETS delivered to your emailbox every Wednesday. http://www.booklocker.com – Your book as a glossy trade paperback or hardback in only 4 to 6 weeks for only $199. High royalties, monthly payments, and you keep your rights! Submission guidelines are online at:
http://www.booklocker.com/getpublished/published.html