Affordable, Hand-Made Hostess Gifts

Every year, I find myself rushing to the store on my way to a holiday party to pick up a bottle of wine or flowers for the host or hostess. This year, I decided to make a personalized, cost-effective hostess gift that can be created months, or even a day in advance of an event. 

For 2010, I created holiday candy jars with personalized labels for just under $10 each (and in some cases, that’s less than flowers, or a bottle of wine!). Making the jars is fun and you can get your creative juices flowing if you allow time to sit down and enjoy the process. I knew I would be going to a couple holiday get-togethers, so I purchased enough supplies to make five jars and headed to my local FedEx Office to print the labels. This eliminated multiple (and last-minute!) trips to craft and grocery stores.

Step One: Find the right jars 

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• Open a new file in Microsoft Word.
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• Insert clip art and choose “Search For.” Within the search function, there are thousands of different designs. I searched for “borders” and found some fun, modern-looking themes.
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• Insert the clip art and then adjust the formatting so that the paper matches the color of the candy. If you get stuck, don’t forget that you can always use the help feature on the menu bar.
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• After I came up with a concept I liked, I created this label below for the front of the jar and top of the jar.

 

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