How to Create Gift Baskets for Special Occasions

We recently attended my best friends wedding reception and she asked me to make her some gift baskets for her husband's sisters and for her friends.  I enjoyed making them and she really loved them.  These can make a fun and easy present, so I thought I would share what I did.

The baskets I used were ones that we had saved from previous events.  There is a post here with some examples of some places I have bought different kinds of baskets cheaply.

I keep an eye out for bargains and clearance items and stash them: make-up, toiletries, jewellery, scarves, accessories etc.  So I usually have a collections of things I can put together as a gift.  I think the baskets look the nicest when they are collated along a single theme or colour, on this occasion, I just mixed and matched the girliest things I could find.

I line the bottom of the basket with newspaper, tissue paper or in this case chunky old napkins.

I usually cover this with some nice tissue paper in the colour of the theme of the basket or a neutral theme which will show off the items inside.

In the past I have made little circles of plain sellotape and stick each item down.  This time I used these double sided little squares to hold everyhting in place.  You don't have to, but if you are transporting the baskets, it is likely the things inside will move around and make a big mess.

I just started by arranging the items in the basket and then sticking them down with a small sqaure sticky pad under each one.  I added some loose heart shaped sweets and then used a large roll of cellophane towrap the basket, taping the ends underneath with a litle help from Little Lady.

We used sticky diamods from the local £-shop to decorate the cellophane.

The baskets contained a mix of scarves, make-up and toiletries, false nails and eye-lashes, hair accessories, make-up bag and brushes and mini gift sets.

It brought to mind the times we have created gift baskets before, and a quick search through this blog yeilded lots of examples (and lots of fun and happy memories alhamdulillah).

These fruit and Indian sweet (mithai) baskets were made by me and my sisters for our cousin's nikah.

These were for my best friend's sisters Henna and we tried to theme them by colour:

I and my sisters made these for my sister-in-law when she got engaged to my brother. It was such a big deal to us because we only have one brother and we really enjoyed making these.

This was the basket we filled with nuts, sweets and dried fruit for my brothers nikah (marriage ceremony). Once the marriage ceremony was complete we opened it and shared it out in handfuls amongst all the guests.

These were the baskets I made with my sisters for my sister-in-law to take on her henna night party. We spent forever putting these together and co-ordinated with pink ribbon.  It's become something of an tradition now for any wedding for us to hole up together with sister-in-law and have a good chat and laugh while we pack gifts.

This wasn't for a gift for one person, but rather we all wrapped our unwanted or unused bangles in cellophane and displayed them at our Eid party for people to take if they wanted.

This is from one year where we made cakes for Eid and displayed them in these heart shaped baskets to take to my parents:

This is probably my most favourite. I decided to make a Ramadan basket one year with dates, scarves, a prayer cap, a little book of dua's and some chocolate with Ramadan labels.  I gave these out at the start of Ramadan to family and friends and as gifts for when we were invited to iftar's and they were well received alhamdulilah.

I would love to hear if you have done something similar or had a theme or style that really went down well with whoever received the gift. Have you been able to do this in a frugal way that saved you money but still made someones day?