Very Last-minute Christmas Gift Ideas

Still have Christmas presents to find, but you’ve procrastinated past shipping deadlines for Christmas delivery? Yeah, I’ve been there before, too! Here are some last-minute options: digital downloads, subscriptions, and electronic gift certificates. 

For a gift that keeps on giving - all year long - consider a pottery subscription. Stella NC Works, a one-woman small batch potter, offers 4 different pottery subscriptions, and the price for each, ranging from $40 - $150, includes shipping costs. By request, an immediate email can be sent directly to the recipient to notify them of the gift subscription. Pottery gets delivered to your chosen recipient quarterly, and you can choose holiday ornaments, small dishes, or mugs – the potter, Erin Sapre, chooses an item each quarter to send to your recipient – or you can choose one particular glaze pattern so that all the pieces sent each quarter match.

Is your gift recipient a chocolate lover? Happy Balls is a husband-and-wife team known for their chocolate covered bourbon balls. Their spectacular Dream Dongs used to be my favorite – think twinkies infused with bourbon and covered in chocolate and sea salt – oh my. But now they’ve developed Bean Tavy Balls (coffee liqueur), on par with the best chocolate money can buy – seriously – and I can’t imagine life without them. Their gift certificate gets emailed to your recipient.

Black and Golden Girl is a one-woman woodworking shop that creates products for a range of recipients: personalized rocking chairs for toddlers and children, golf ball grabbers, adirondack chairs, cutting boards, and whiskey smokers, among other things. Her digital gift card comes in a range of values, corresponding to a range of products. 

Another gift that gives all year long is a “bee box” subscription from Milk & Honey: handmade soap, raw honey, lip balms, salves, etc. Milk & Honey handcrafts their cold-processed soap with fresh raw milk from their goats, and adds honey from their beehives, in addition to a variety of moisturizing oils.

Gift certificate for a custom graphite portrait: choose the number of subjects (including pets!) and size of the portrait to end up with a price between $60 and $280. The recipient receives a gift certificate that they can use when they are ready to provide source images, and a spectacular portrait is finished 1-2 weeks later. The artist, Elain Fraticelli, can change backgrounds, add color, and work from several photos.

If your gift recipient is a knitter, check out Joan’s Garden’s digital download knitting patterns that come as a .pdf file digital download. Joan’s patterns, $6 - $7 each, include beanies that feature octopi, flamingos, dinosaurs, jellyfish, bats, and many other subjects, or 3-D animals such as seahorses, octopi, and crocodiles.

Not sure what your gift recipient wants or needs? Buy them a gift certificate between $10 and $250 to the Artisans Cooperative marketplace, where you can find products that are actually made by artisans’ hands – original paintings, jewelry, pottery, roving and hand-spun yarn, rugs, clothing, and so much more. The card has no expiration date and is an immediate download upon purchase.

Another gift card option is from Independent Goods, which carries products from over 50 independent makers. Owners Mark and Susan focus on independent makers, small batch, and family owned. They write story cards about each maker that are included with each purchase, to carry the story of the individuals with the products, which range among books, jewelry, paint supplies, chocolate, candles, small batch coffee, and even cow bells made in Norway from recycled brass ammunition cartridges. In amounts from $10 to $500, their gift card can be delivered by email or mail.  

Push/Pull, a cooperative owned by the artists, carries the work of hundreds of individual artisans in addition to commercial art supplies. Handmade watercolor paint, patches, paintings, ink, stickers, and so much more. They offer two last-minute options: subscription boxes of art supplies, and eGift cards.

Hopefully you’ve found an option you like, and I wish you all the biggest cheer of the holiday(s) you celebrate. If you know of another gift source for last-minute shoppers, please let me know!