Each year at Christmas I enjoy making the people I love a collection of homemade goodies. It’s a fun little task to make up all sorts of little bottles and jars full of lovely hand lotions and edible goodies and lip balms. And I love packaging all these creations up together. Each year I try and make it a little different. Different packaging, different baskets or boxes, and different combinations of lotions, potions and preserves.
All the body care recipes that I create are much easier to make than a batch of cookies. I also try my very best to make sure that my recipes are much more affordable than store bought. For me, if anything is too complicated or too expensive, I just won’t make it. All the recipes I list below are simple to make and very affordable.
In the photo above I used a thrift store basket with a thrift store red napkin along with some fresh cut cedar boughs. Inside I placed:
- Applesauce
- Home Made Hand Lotion
- Homemade Deodorant (I split the recipe in half and poured it into these adorable 2 ounce tins from Mountain Rose Herbs)
- Baking Soda Hair Rinse
In addition, you could also add these easy to make items:
- Homemade Chapstick
- Winter Hand Salve, which is also a very effective ezcema salve
- Homemade Beeswax Lotion
For a handful of dollars you can buy my Simple Hand Crafted Body Care ebooklet that provides 6 body care recipes that I personally use myself everyday. The booklet also includes a separate label download. The recipes found in that are:
- Body Butter (seriously a wonderful lotion that I love more than anything store bought)
- Lip Balm (I really do use this one every day, it’s lovely)
- Microdermabrasion Scrub (a wonderful facial scrub that you could make with ingredients in your kitchen today)
- Soothing Bath Salts
- Spicy Aftershave
You can buy the ebooklet directly here:
It’s my guess that you already have olive oil, baking soda, cornstarch and honey (and applesauce or other summer canned goodness) in your kitchen. Add in a few more ingredients that I’ve listed below and you’ll have yourself the base to make pretty much all of the items above. I estimate that if you buy all the listed ingredients it should cost about $40-$50 and you can get about 6 batches of deodorant, 15 batches of hand lotion, 8 pints of beeswax lotion, 4 batches of Winter Hand Salve, and countless tins of lip balm or tubes of homemade chapstick. Not too bad!
The label design is inspired by my love of all things Scandinavian at Christmas time. I just love the simple white and red and that folksy cross stitching is so sweet. You will see that there are two sized labels, one for wide mouth canning jars and one for small mouth jars. The smaller label also works for those cute 2 oz tin lids. Click on the image below and it will take you directly to the download page. Print them out at full size (Adobe Reader tends to shrink things slightly, so double check in your print window that it doesn’t reduce your file.) on Avery Sticker Project Paper. Cut them out and you are ready to adorn your gifts. Enjoy!
(The above post includes affiliate links. When you make a purchase with those links I earn a small percentage of money from your purchase. Thank you for helping to support A Sonoma Garden!)
I can even begin to tell you how great your site is!! I’ve ordered the stuff for making hand lotion using your affiliate link so hopefully that will kick some funds back to you.
Thank you for reminding me of your lotion recipe – I’ve been searching for a good handmade gift for friends and co-workers, and I think this will be the perfect solution!
I just love your blog! I just started a blog myself focusing on my love of all things DIY and, particularly, right now, on my obsession with green cleaning. I don’t know if it will ever be this lovely though
Great job, lovely photos and informative posts. I especially appreciate these labels. I’m sure I’ll be printing some out soon for my homemade holiday gift.
I just wanted to drop by and let you know that I’ve linked to gift tags/labels that you designed. The post is located here http://burdart.blogspot.com/2009/11/free-printable-artist-made-gift-tags.html There is also a text only post for slower connections just below it. Thank you for sharing your art so freely. I would love it if you would let me know if you have designed other tags or labels that should be included. And please, by all means, share this post. Stamp out store tags! 😉
Francie
OMG Francie…………I just love your blog. I am supposed to be doing homework and googled for some canning label images for harvest; came across Scott & Kendra’s “A Sonoma Garden” and ran into your response for your blog…………anyway I’m just so excited about finding A Sonoma Garden and finding you, especially on Etsy. I buy Etsy all of the time. I love it. Just wanted to send a big thanks to both of you for kicking my creative thinking into high gear!!
Kim
I’ve been searching for some labels for the tops of my jars and these are perfect. When I download the pdf it looks like a scan of a photo is on top of the design so the labels aren’t usable. Am I the only one having trouble with the file?
Mama Urchin – I just double checked and I’m not seeing anything wrong with the file. You are downloading the actual pdf, right? Maybe you downloaded the flickr image instead??? WIsh I could help, but maybe try and download it again and see if it works.
Thank you SO MUCH! This is totally perfect for the peppermint bath salts my girls and I are making. Lovely. Thank you!
Thank you so much! These are perfect, and I love them. I am having the same problem as Mama Urchin, though. When I download it, it shows the scan of something that looks like the original embroidery? I have tried several times and I keep getting the same image. I see the labels, but the scan is super-imposed on the top of it. I am using a MacBook. Any ideas, anyone?
Merry Christmas!
Ach! Laura & Mama Urchin, sorry about the image problem. I looked back in the file and saw there was a hidden layer in there, I took it out and it should be all fixed. Sorry about that! Print away ladies!
Wow – this is a fantastic blog, K!!! I can tell I’m going to enjoy many hours here reading and clicking around when I should be writing.
so fun!
Ny
thank you so much!!!
I just reprinted these labels! Problem solved! I know this is such a busy time. I so appreciate that you took the time to look into this! Merry Christmas to you! Many thanks!!!!
Thanks for download link! happy new year for blog administrator
You truly inspire me to keep writing on my blog, the truth is sometimes it gets boring but then I remember a site like yours and I feel energized to write. Thanks for the encouragement.
I just found your site and i’m in love! I just ordered everything I need to make hand lotion and chapstick. One question though… where do you buy the jars for the lotion? I haven’t seen them anywhere local, so i’m hoping maybe you know somewhere online. Do you use 2oz for the hand lotion?
Thanks!!!!
I think this is such a wonderful idea to make a gift basket for Christmas for friends and relatives using things that you make yourself. Such a warm feeling for the people at the receiving end.
I love them, Thank you so much! These are perfect.