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Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Making basket filler for gift baskets


Hard to believe, but you can buy shredded paper to use in gift baskets. Retail locations that sell party supplies and gift wrap accessories, sell bags of crinkled, shredded paper, to use as gift-basket bedding, for about $3 a bag.

You can make your own, in minutes, using your home-office paper shredder -- for nothing, if you don't mind using junk mail paper. Or for a couple of pennies, you can use plain paper, or tea-stained paper, or scraps of gift wrap.

Commercially-shredded paper is crinkled. This gives the paper loft and cushions items better than flat paper shreds. When you shred documents at home, you get a pile of matted paper bits. For disposal, those matted shreds are easier to deal with, as they take up less space in your recycling bin. However, for filling a gift box or basket, you want loft in your filler.

You can crinkle your own, home-shredded paper, super-duper easy.


See what happens when you take some of these matted paper shreds --


if you tightly pack these into "snowballs", about the size of your fist,


then fluff it up, you increase the volume of your paper filler, almost by double.

When I was filling my spa basket, I wanted something prettier than our financial documents all shredded up, to cushion the spa gifts.


The day that I tea-stained the poetry scripted papers, I had leftover tea in the baking pan. So, I took an extra few sheets of blank paper and tea-stained those with the leftover tea. Once dried, I put them through our paper shredder. They had a natural look that went well with my basket.


I also had some colorful scraps of wrapping paper that were really too wrinkled or too small to wrap anything. I put those pieces of gift wrap through the shredder, too.


When I tossed the colored and ecru paper together, I had a pretty confetti blend of papers for basket filler, in my spa basket.


I crinkled this filler, using the snowball technique, then filled my gift-basket.

I lined my basket with a large square of pink plastic, which was part of a large shopping bag that I'd acquired a while ago. I opened that bag along the seams, and cut out a large square.

Ten minutes of my time and I saved about $3.

Just a frugal shredded paper tip -- over the holidays, you may receive some gifts wrapped in gift wrap. The good and large pieces can be reused for future holiday gift-wrapping. You can iron on a very low setting to smooth out wrinkles. The smaller pieces, or those with writing on the wrap, or places where tape peeled off the print -- you know, the pieces that you really don't want to reuse -- can be run through your paper shredder in batches of like color. You can make some basket filler for future gifting, with these gift wrap scraps. Remember to tear the tape pieces off, first. They might gum up your shredder.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Okay, it's time for the hand-crafted spa items giveaway! Plus how I made bubble bath for gifting


I've gone through everything that I've made, and I have a small parcel of spa items to give away. Use these items for yourself, or save them as stocking stuffers or a small gift for someone at the holidays. And please, don't be critical of my novice knitting! Ha ha! (Unless that's constructive criticism, of course.)

What's in this giveaway?
  • a bar each of Goats Milk Lavender soap and Honey Almond Oatmeal soap
  • a packet of Lavender Oatmeal bath tea and a packet of Peach Rose bath tea
  • one lavender spa cloth and one ecru spa cloth

This giveaway is open to USA residents (even Hawaii and Alaska) only. To enter, simply leave a comment at the end of this post. This giveaway ends at midnight, PST, on Saturday, November 26, 2016. Check back Monday morning, November 28, for the winner, and I'll get this in the mail as quickly as I can!

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Now, on to making bubble bath.

This bubble bath went into the spa basket that I gave to my son's girlfriend for her birthday this past weekend. (Photo of the completed basket was on facebook a couple of weeks ago, and will be in tomorrow's post, FYI.)


At the end of summer, I found this pretty bottle on clearance at Michael's, for $2.37.


Hobby Lobby carries bubble bath/shower gel base in 32 oz buckets. I used a 40% off coupon, and paid $4.80 for 32 ounces of bubble bath base. To the base, I added a tiny amount of lavender soap colorant, lavender oil and vitamin E oil. It's very, very bubbly stuff, so it can take thinning. My pretty bottle holds 8 ounces, so I used just under 8 ounces of bubble bath base, at a cost of about $1.20. I had the soap colorant, lavender oil and vitamin E oil at home. My estimated cost on those items is 25 cents.

My total cost on the homemade bubble bath in a pretty bottle, was about $3.82. While that's not super-duper inexpensive, it's about half to one-third of what I might spend on a pretty bottle of bubble bath, retail, at a place like Marshall's. (I now have 24 ounces of bubble bath base leftover, in my craft cupboard, to make bottles of bubble bath for gifts in the future.)


The whole process took less than 10 minutes. The base is thick, so I melted what I needed in a glass measuring cup in the microwave for about 20 seconds. Then I stirred in the color and oils. When completely mixed, I poured the bubble bath into the glass bottle. Easy peasy.

The bubble bath base was difficult to locate, retail, in small quantities. I found it at Hobby Lobby, in the soap-making supplies. I also read that you can use unscented, baby shampoo for the base. Although, this bubble bath base was quite thick and bubbly. A retail product like baby shampoo is thinner. So, I'm not sure how much of a savings you'd achieve by using an unscented baby shampoo.

For a quick and easy hand-crafted gift, particularly for making several gifts at once, bubble bath could knock 4 to 5 gifts off your list, with no special skills or equipment required. Honestly, this is much simpler than making soap.

You may already have a couple of bottles that could be used, such as specialty vinegar, steak sauce or condiment bottles, or you could check thrift shops for bottles, if this idea interests you.

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Anyway, don't forget to enter the giveaway before Saturday, midnight, November 26, 2016. And come back on Monday, November 28, 2016 for the announcement of the winner.
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