I am so excited to be a part of this Handmade Holidays Blog Hop!  Today I am sharing my handmade holiday gift idea.  I love putting together thoughtful and crafty gifts for friends and family.  Gift baskets are a great way to make a thoughtful, yet inexpensive gift for a loved one.  And they are so cute!  I put together a DIY Hot Cocoa Kit that you could make for anyone on your gift list this year.  In addition to the pre-packaged hot cocoa, mug, and other little treats that are part of this kit, I included a DIY wood burned mug & towel hanger and an adorable Christmas themed tea towel for the kitchen.  Today I wanted to show you how I made the tea towel and mug hanger.  Let’s get started!

This element is probably my favorite in this little kit.  And it looks intimidating to make!  But it’s actually surprisingly easy to do.  In fact, this is the first wood burned project I’ve ever done.  This video will show the process from start to finish!  *Sorry for my big ole head at the beginning!*  And I included a step by step tutorial for you below as well.

For this piece you will need a wood slice and a wood burning tool, both from Walnut Hollow.  You can also download the ‘Merry & Bright’ template HERE.

 

The first thing you will want to do is trace the template onto the wood slice.  This makes it a lot easier to get nice clean lines and a great looking finished product.  I don’t trust my freehand skills when it comes to projects like this!  Ha!  Cut the template down a bit, tape each end lightly to the board to hold the paper in place, and firmly trace around the words to make an indent in the wood.  Don’t press to hard though or the paper may tear.

Once you are done tracing the design, remove the paper template and get ready to burn some wood!  Woot woot!  Best part right here.  I used the pointy tip for mine so I could trace around the design first, then fill it all in once that was done.  Be very careful as the tool gets really hot!!

After you have completed wood burning your design, you can add some little details and the hooks!  I just painted a simple holly berry using green and red DecoArt paint, and used gold hooks on mine.  This wood is soft enough that you can just screw the hooks into place.  That made it super easy to put together!

And that’s it!  This is a great gift idea even by itself!  Wood burning is such a fun craft and I am probably going to be doing it a lot more often now that I’ve gotten the hang of if a bit!

I LOVE using fabric paint!  And it’s super easy to put together.  It’s just two parts paint to one part fabric medium.  And that’s it!  You can literally make any color fabric paint you want from one bottle of medium.  So for this towel you will need some fabric medium from your local craft store, acrylic paints (I used the same DecoArt paints as mentioned above for the wood burned project), some tea towels, spouncer brushes, and your stencil cut from this crazy adorable Christmas SVG file found HERE.

First you will need to mix up your paint.  Just follow the direction on the bottle of your fabric medium.  Mine is just a 2-1 ratio!  But I am not sure if that’s universal, so it’s always a good idea to read the bottle first.

Firmly apply your stencil to the front of the tea towel.  Make sure all the edges are sealed really well so you don’t get any bleeding under the stencil!

Carefully dab the paint onto the stencil.  Make sure not to ‘swipe’ the paint over your design or it will bleed underneath.  Just lightly dabbing it up and down works perfect!  And you can go over it once more if you need better coverage.  I used a mix of green and red paint here, but feel free to do it however you would like!  I wanted to stick to the overall theme of my little gift basket.  I love how it turned out!

After I got these two DIY elements of my gift basket finished, I started to do some final touches and package everything all together!

I stained this ADORABLE tiny crate from Walnut Hallow to fill with all kinds of Christmas goodies.  I included the wood burned mug hanger, the tea towel, a cute mug, some hot cocoa (duh!), and some fun little chocolate stir spoons!  Because I wanted to make this basket a little more high end and nice, I used some glue dots by Adhesives by 3L to secure all the items in the crate so they wouldn’t move around after I got the basket all put together.

I wrapped everything up in some clear wrap and secured it with a festive bow!

I hope this festive little gift idea helps get you inspired for some holiday crafting!  Thanks for joining me on this Handmade Holidays Blog Hop!  Don’t forget to check out the other amazing bloggers who are also participating.

And a BIG THANKS to our amazing sponsors for the hop!  I used products for this hot cocoa basket from Walnut Hollow, DecoArt, and Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L.  They are also providing AMAZING prizes in an giveaway that you can enter!  Enter for your chance to win below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!!

Emily

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