For me, gift giving is so much fun, especially when it’s something I can make myself. The presentation is my favorite part and I love to make my gift wrap extra special. This is part 2 of a homemade gift basket idea. You can go to this post to see part 1 How To Make A Pretty And Easy Mother’s Day Gift With Homemade essential oil products   or for another fun idea to make, check our this post How To Create Vintage Inspired Pots & Make A Simple Topiary

This idea is derived from a French vintage theme. I love the feminine look of anything French and the romantic and girly feel of all things French. For this basket, it’s all about the presentation, the gift wrap is a gift in itself.
I love to use rubber stamps and pretty papers to dress up gifts and create pretty wrapped packages. Once you make the investment in stamps, you can use them for so many things.

A few other items that make gift presentations so unique and pretty are the packaging options available. I love using paper containers like chinese food boxes and french fry boxes. Berry Baskets and pretty bags decorated and embellished are also fun ways to present a gift.

I love to give homemade essential oil products as gifts. For this basket, I made some lavender bath salts and wanted to place them in pretty bags. I used glycine bags(they are usually in the baking sections of craft stores) They have a translucent, waxy look to them and are great for creating a vintage look. I then just used paper stamps to embellish them, then dressed them up with flowers, glitter and other small embellishments found in the scrapbook sections of craft stores

Boxes can also be dressed up with paper flowers and and stamps as well. The other thing I think that adds a special touch to a gift is a homemade card. I like to make several at one time to have extras on hand for any occasion. They are so simple to make so doing several at one time is pretty east

For the cards, I just buy various sizes and colors of plain cards (found in scrapbook or stationary sections of card stores. Then  all you need to do is stamp our designs on them I like to have one large stamp for a background, such as this old script look. Then I like to add a spotlight such as this Eiffel tower(for a French theme) or I like to use dress forms as well.

I start by stamping my background first. To get a vintage look, you don’t need to heavily load ink onto the card, it looks better and more authentic if it’s faded in some areas. Then I take a makeup sponge and feather the edges lightly with the ink to give the car a more aged look.

Next you can add your embellishments and ribbons to dress up the card. I used these cards as labels for my gift basket since it was featuring lavender products. So I just printed a label with the definition of lavender and placed it on the card then distressed it a bit with some ink.

I also love to use old vintage look stamps on my cards to give a more authentic feel to the card.. Then just embellish with any colors you want to add, or keep it neutral.

For this particular gift, I put the lavender bath salts in plain crear bags first (to keep the oils from staining the outer bag) To make the salts, I just used 2 cups of epsom salts, added 20-30 drops of essential oil and a little sprinkle of ground fresh lavender for some color. Placed the salts in the clear bag first and sealed it with a little label. Then placed it in my decorated outer bag.

I tucked the whole think into a cute natural berry basket filled with some shredded paper and tucked one of the pretty cards inside. I also added my homemade lip balm recipe in this post here.

You can add whatever products you want to the basket or even just put candies and little cookies in the bags. The point is that you can create a gift and package it so beautifully it won’t matter what’s in it!

You can use your imagination for so many different looks and I hope some of these will give you inspiration to do your own gifts. These would make beautiful favors for a bridal or baby shower, a girlfriends gathering or any “just because” gifts. If you make several ahead of time, you can always have some pretty cards and packaging on hand at any time to give a simple but beautifully wrapped gift that’s special because you made it!
I’d love to hear your thoughts and please let me know if you have any questions. I love feedback and love even more when my followers come say hi. Also, let me know if you make any of these yourself and send me a photo! I appreciate you all and thanks so much for following along. Below are some sources for products you can use….

Happy Crafting!