DIY Coffee Lovers Gift Basket

One of the challenges of running a blog that creates crafts, DIY projects and Cricut files is that we end up with a lot of stuff just sitting around the office after we create it. That can be handy at Christmas time when we use the projects we would be making anyway as fodder for the blog. It’s a little harder when you are creating projects specifically for the blog. Our solution was to start incorporating our projects into gift baskets that can be donated to fundraising auctions for local events.

That’s how our collection of “sarcastic coffee mugs” ended up getting turned into a gift basket for a local small business event where I was a speaker. Of course, this basket would also make a wonderful shower gift, birthday present or business gift as well. The best part is, the basket looks like a million bucks but cost a fraction of that to put together.

Our original plan had been to pair the coffee mugs with a k-cup stand and several boxes of k-cups. In fact, we put that basket together for an event we were doing the first time we created these mugs. The problem was, the k-cup boxes took up so much space it was impossible to feature the mugs properly. Since the mugs are the most creative part of the basket, we knew we’d need a different approach.

I happened to be out shopping with a friend at TJ Maxx when I spotted a beautiful glass French coffee press on clearance for $9. Originally a $35 item, this was a nice snag. It also solved the problem of the k-cups by going in a completely different coffee direction. A trip to Gabe’s turned up the beautiful basket for $6 and the coffee grinder for another $9. One last stop at Big Lots landed me a $3 mocha-scented coffee candle, an “I drink coffee for your protection” piece of wall art for $5 and a bag of Brookside’s amazingly delicious Crunchy Clusters for just $0.98. Since our mugs came from the Dollar Tree and the vinyl was already in our crafting collection, we were able to put together the basket for $37.

If you purchased this basket through a gift retailer, or even bought each item at retail and assembled it yourself, your costs would hit $100 easily. At a fraction of that price, our basket still looked gorgeous wrapped up with a beautiful caramel colored bow on it. I even got several comments from people admiring it as I carried it into the event.

If you’re interested in putting your own Sarcastic Coffee Lovers basket together, check out our original sarcastic coffee mugs post where you can get the .SVG files for your Cricut or Silhouette machine. Pair the files with your favorite mugs from Dollar Tree and you’re on your way to a unique and creative gift at a fabulous price.