Many people would like to be able to give a birthday gift basket but can not afford the expensive premade birthday gift baskets sold in gift shops. Luckily, making your own birthday gift basket can be an inexpensive activity if you know what you need. Here is how to go about making your own inexpensive birthday gift basket.
The first thing you are going to need is a suitable basket. Thrift shops are a wonderful place to find baskets that are in good condition for very little money. Another option is to make a “basket” out of one of the gifts! For example, a towel with the long edges rolled up and the short edges tied together with ribbons makes a nice little basket for holding bath items.
Once you have found a basket, start looking around for items to fill it. You are going to want one or two large “centerpiece” items and a few matching “filler” items to round out the gift. The large item should take up a significant part of the basket, but should still fit. If the large item is too short to give a pronounced presence when sitting in the basket, crumple up tissue paper and place it beneath the large gift so it sticks up the highest out of all of the other gifts.
The large item should cost more than the filler items as a rule of thumb, though price is not as important as having the items be something the recipient would like and having the items match. For example, an inexpensive teddy bear makes a perfect large gift for a child’s birthday gift basket. Continuing the example of a child’s birthday gift basket, once the bear has been placed in the basket, other small toys would be perfect basket filler. Perhaps a colorful bottle of bubble solution from the dollar store and a little headband with bear ears from a craft shop could be added to finish out the birthday gift basket?
Once the basket has been filled with matching gifts, the final touches are clear wrapping and bows. Inexpensive colored cellophane from a craft store or the grocery store works very well for adding color to the traditional handled basket. Just tying a large ribbon around the basket or adding a big bow to the largest gift works very well for finishing out a birthday gift basket as well.