Craftaholics Anonymous Handmade Gift Exchange

A while ago I stumbled across a blog post about the Handmade Gift Exchange organized by Linda from Craftaholics Anonymous. And it sounded like TONS of fun, so I joined the summer exchange!

You can find all the details on Linda’s blog, but the basic idea is you sign up for the exchange, you are randomly (and anonymously) assigned a person to give a gift to, and another person is randomly, anonymously assigned to give you a gift. Then we had the entire month of June to secretly ask questions and try to figure out what gift we would make for our giftees. You don’t have to be a professional or anything (good thing for me!), the only catch is that the gift has to be handmade.

The exchange is designed to be anonymous, but once you’re assigned to a person you can forgo that if you wish. I thought it would be fun to keep it anonymous though, which is why this post is so late! I wanted to make sure my giftee received her gift before I published it all out on the blogosphere

I was assigned to give a gift to Aly Nickerson from For Such A Time Designs, and I had such a hard time choosing between a few gifts that I decided to make them all for her!

You may recognize those fabric flowers and the coffee cozy from previous tutorials I’ve shared here at Practically Functional!

When I signed up for the exchange I sort of had the idea in my head that I would make the coffee cozy for whoever my giftee was. It’s such a quick, easy, and fun project, plus it’s super practical and functional so it represents my blog well! So after Aly was assigned to me I sent a few quick questions just to make sure she actually drinks coffee (she does) and to find out what sort of color schemes she likes so I could customize the coffee cozy for her.

But as soon as I looked at her blog and saw her gorgeous long hair I immediately wanted to make her some fun fabric flower clips as well! So I did. I sent a few more anonymous questions her way and got some ideas of her style (muted and vintage, love it!) and made some flowers to match it.

I’m not very good at packaging things…usually I just stick them in a brown cardboard box and mail them on their way, but I remembered just in time that I had recently bought a watch that came in a fun tin, and that I had saved the tin because “I might find something to use it for later”. So I packaged it up in a pretty tin, and if she’s anything like me the tin can be part of the “gift” and she can save it for repackaging something else later on

I still haven’t received my gift from whoever was assigned to me. But on the very first day of the exchange I did have someone anonymously ask me a few questions, so I’m still optimistic! Yesterday was the deadline to send out the handmade gifts, so I’m checking my mail daily and hoping for a fun package!

I had a ton of fun with this gift exchange and will definitely be doing it again! I think the next one is in November; if you want to sign up with me just head  over to the gift exchange page on Linda’s blog and she’ll let us know when the next one is going on.

And if you want to see some of the other fun handmade gifts that people made or received you can check out the link party where they’re all linked up!