Thanks Callaway 
- most of the gifts I made were knitted or crocheted- I was working on them almost any time I sat down for about 3 months. They were mainly small items like scarves, hats, socks and fingerless gloves, but I made Dunc a jumper in secret (don't ask me how I pulled that one off lol) and I embroidered a pyjama case for my niece. The bath salts sound really nice- I've made them before but they took so long to dry out once I'd added the oils and colour- how did you do them?
I know a lot of people think that hand-made gifts are for people who are cheap (although that attitude seems to be less common in the US), but since we don't have a lot of money I feel that its nicer to put some time and effort into making a nicer gift than we could afford to buy. I'm lucky that everyone I've given things to seems to have appreciated them, I've heard some horror stories on other websites about comments handmade gifts have gotten.
We used epsom salts in a ziploc bag and added the fragrance she chose and some food coloring for whatever color she wanted for that layer in the jars. For example, if she wanted peach, we used red and yellow food coloring. Then we sealed the bag and she shook it, massaged it like play dough, or whatever until she mixed it inside the plastic bag. We didn't worry about letting it dry out since it was only a few drops of liquid, we just added the layers to the jars as we made them and it seemed to turn out fine. We added some of each color to each of the jars. I think that there were six or seven colors in all this time. The cloth bags we made to hold them had drawstrings similar to cloth wine bottle bags. I
think that her teachers all liked them. They seemed to like that she made them herself, with my help, of course. I guess that it's possible that they were just being polite.
I don't think that hand-made gifts are cheap at all. They require an investment of time, money and effort to make.
I know you said
don't ask you how you managed to knit a jumper and keep it a secret, but how on earth did you do it? What does it look like?
I have trouble keeping anything a secret from my husband.
