Gift giving on a $0 budget

Hello everyone, how are you?  I hope you are all having a fantastic weekend.  During March I enjoyed following Stephanie's blog Full of Great Ideas as she set herself the challenge of decorating (which she loves to do), on a $0 budget in a bid to stop unnecessary spending.  She had to use what she had on hand and amazed herself and her followers with her creativity.  You can read the many things she learnt from this challenge on her blog and of course see her lovely creative ideas on her $0 budget.

Stephanie is having a linky party for other ideas on a $0 budget so I thought I might contribute.  My idea is a little different from decorating but I thought it was a practical one.

I'm a gardener and have an assortment of herbs growing outside my back door.  They recently needed dividing so rather than put the excess plants in the compost, I planted some in pots.  Stephanie's challenge had me thinking about gift giving on a $0 budget so here is what I did.

One very overgrown oregano plant, weedy too.

Divided oregano plant $0, recycled tin can $0 and soil from the garden $0.

Recycled newspaper $0, string already in my supplies $0 and a tag already in my supplies $0.

Put these altogether and you have a lovely $0 gift to give someone who is either a gardener, has a passion for things culinary or even for someone who is hosting a dinner party.

 What do you think of my idea?  I had so much fun doing this I think I might be looking at what else I can do on a $0 budget.  See Full of Great Ideas for other $0 budget ideas.

Bye for now,

Anne  xx

Storage

 I recently discovered a blog called Full of Great Ideas by Stephanie who is one very creative lady.  She recently set herself the challenge of a $0 spending month other than for things such as bills and essential food items.  As she loves to create and decorate, she is looking at what she already has in her craft room to use.  I am fascinated by what she is creating and how inventive she is becoming.  I've been encouraging her because I think we can all fuel our passion to create and decorate without spending, especially if you have a well stocked craft room like me.

Can you identify what this is?

It's supposed to be a CD holder.  It's a useless piece of wire that doesn't function as as a CD holder.  Check this out.

CD's spilling out all over the place.  We don't have room for CD towers due to limited floor space and besides they are so ugly.  So what to do.  Light bulb moment inspired by Stephanie, dig out a cardboard box from the recycling bin and make something.

Cut box in half and glue top and bottom flaps and reinforce the bottom with some heavy card saved from some other packaging at an earlier date.

I've used curtain fabric samples to cover the boxes with.  I used craft glue as the hot glue gun just wasn't doing it for me.  (All tips on how to get a hot glue gun working properly would be greatly appreciated.)  The fabric has been tucked away for years (given to me by someone who had a shop) and while it's not my favourite fabric, it serves perfectly well for this project.  The boxes aren't going to be on display after all.

I have white card strips also tucked away and I stamped them with fancy alphabet letters for a bit of whimsical nonsense.  Can't have CD's out of alphabetical order now can we?

I

Here is the second box covered in outrageous fabric.  Can you imagine curtains made from this fabric about 10 -15 years ago?  Of course I used the same outrageous colours to stamp the alphabet letters on the card strips for this box.  My stamping skills leave much to be desired, but hey, out of sight again.

This is a slight improvement on what was there before. 

I just have to tackle the cassettes now.  Yes, I still have cassettes and until I find some way of converting them to CD's, they are staying put.  I probably could have used plastic boxes to store these in, but plastic is so ugly and I would have to go out and try and buy something to fit.  This was so much more fun and it cost me zilch as everything I used was in my craft room.  As a side note, the blue box contains classical music (hubby) and the big circle box is for contemporary, boppy music (me).  :)

Enjoy your weekend and if you live in Victoria, enjoy your extra long weekend.

Anne  xx