DIY Christmas Gifts (that people actually want) + HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT | JENerationDIY

What up hooligans, it's Jennifer. Welcome to the jungle. I have a bunch of plants around me. Also, welcome back to Elos. This little guy is down here today. So sad, we are almost nearing the end of Elos. Hence why today I am doing a DIY gifts video for the holiday season. Speaking of gifts that you can give this holiday season, I have a huge announcement. I finally have merch. Yeah! I've been on YouTube for like six years at this point. I've never done any sort of merch before. I mean, I do DIY videos. I'm like, why would I sell people things when they can like probably make it themselves? But honestly, I think I created things that I wouldn't really know how to create well. But you guys have been asking for merch for so long. These are genuinely things that I would wear and would buy. So hopefully you guys like them. I wanted the theme to be like plant vibes because I always have some sort of plant in the back of my videos. I'm trying to find some like deep, dark meaning to it, but really it's just because I think they look pretty. One of the items in my merch collection is what I'm wearing right now. All the designs on this hoodie are hand-drawn. The girl pictured is the happy hooligan, AKA me or you if you decide to get this hoodie. Super, super comfy, been wearing this a lot. The next piece is, I promise I'm not trying to flash you, this is not that kind of channel. We have, you know, I'm not gonna take off this hoodie because it's really freaking cold up in Canada, but I am obsessed with this shirt. It's this like nice yellow mustard color. I just think it's so cute. Oh, I almost forgot. We also have a matching phone case. This one is the exact same design as the T-shirt, but on a phone, obviously. So yeah, I'm very excited to be launching my first merch collection. Also, if you're watching this video on the day that it comes out, AKA Black Friday, AKA November 29th, there is a huge sale going on. You can get 25% off. So I would hop on that if you want any merch in time for the holidays. So if you wanna check out my merch, you can go to Fanjoy, freaking a-frack. You can go to fanjoy.co slash GenerationDIY. Yeah, I really hope that you guys, what is wrong with my freaking hair, dude? Technical freaking difficulties. Oh shoot, I was just putting my camera away when I forgot to mention that the first 50 people who order something will receive a signed Polaroid. So check it out, bye. Okay, so anyway, this video is going to be DIY gifts, as I said before. These things turned out really freaking cute and I wanna keep them for myself, but I do have people in mind who I wanna give these to. Actually, I didn't realize this, but two of the things that I made in this video are plant-themed, so I guess we're going along with the merch today. Plants just seem to trickle into every aspect of my life, but I kind of enjoy that because I don't go outside, so they provide me the oxygen that I need. Without them, I would be just breathing in my own carbon dioxide and shriveling up and dying. So shout out to plants, guys. Can I get a shout out to plants? Anyway, let's get into the DIYs. All right, so the first DIY is this embroidered bucket hat. I have been obsessed with bucket hats recently. I just have a huge appreciation for them and I think they look really cute. So for this embroidery, I'm going to need, obviously, some embroidery thread. So I chose two different shades of green. I cut off a section. An embroidery thread usually has six strands, so I'm gonna split it up into two groups of three strands, just so that when we double it up, it's back to six strands. So after I separated it into two groups, I used one of the threads and just threaded it into the needle and tied a knot at the end. I decided on a plant theme because we all know I am obsessed with plants, so are our lungs. And honestly, it's pretty beginner-friendly, which is why I chose it. So I just started doing a running stitch, I believe it's called, and made kind of a curved vertical line. Can I call it vertical if it's curved? Probably not. But basically, this is going to be the stem of the leaf. All right, to create the leaf, I just pushed the needle through to the top, pulled it through, and then I just pushed the needle back down literally right beside where I pulled the thread through, and then pushed the needle back up half a centimeter from where the needle entered. And then I just looped my thread around the needle and pulled the needle through. And now I have a little tiny loop. And to secure the loop down, I just pushed the needle back down at the end of the leaf and pulled it all the way through. And now you have your leaf. So I'm gonna continue doing this all the way down. And I know it sounds really complicated, but once you do it, it's actually super, super easy. Once I finished my little fern branch, I went in with a darker green. Even after finishing this project, I'm still not sure if I made the right choice by going with the darker color. Maybe I should have gone more consistent just with one color, but I might just be like really picky. I'm not really sure. Anyway, I wanted it to cross over the original leaf a little bit. So I kind of made it curve over the stem and I made it a bit longer than the original one. And then I just did the exact same thing as I did with the first leaf and just made the little loops. I made these loops a lot smaller than the first one because I realized the first one kind of had it bigger than I wanted it to. And this is the final result. Embroidery does usually take a long time. However, I think this took me probably like 15 minutes, which is pretty fast. This can be a pretty last minute gift idea. And I feel like as I'm getting older in life, I appreciate homemade gifts a lot more than store-bought ones just because I'm kind of at a point in my life where I don't really want presents anymore. And so handmade gifts kind of have that sentimental value and just show a lot more thoughtfulness. ♪ Baby toy, toy buddy ♪ For the next DIY gift idea, I'm going to be making jewelry dishes. I got polymer clay because it's pretty sturdy. You bake it to harden it. I was on a time crunch. So if you are looking for last minute, I would recommend polymer clay. But if you have a little bit more time, you can also use air dry clay, which is a lot cheaper. So I just took a chunk of clay and I rolled it out with not a rolling pin, clearly, but eventually I made it work and I rolled out a flat sheet of clay. Don't worry if it's not completely even because I feel like that adds to the handmade look. I grabbed a circular object and I traced that with my X-Acto knife on the clay to cut out the circle. Now that I have my perfectly cut circle, I struggled to peel it off of the table. So I'm actually using that same dish as a shape guide for my DIY. If you don't have like a little custard bowl or sauce dish that is the exact size that you want, you can just use a bowl and stick it in there. I kind of just pressed it in to make sure there wasn't a big air bubble underneath and just so that I could even out the clay a little bit more. To make the size more even, I went around the edge with an X-Acto knife to cut off any excess. Once I was done that, I kind of just used my finger to smooth out the edge a little bit so it wasn't so harsh. I also just curled up the edges a little bit so it would be a little more structured and just would be more functional as a jewelry dish. I made a second one because I was going to decorate it differently. And then I went ahead and just baked those in my oven. You can just follow the instructions on your package. I put mine in for about 20 minutes at 275 Fahrenheit. And when you take them out of the oven, they'll still be kind of soft. So you have to let them completely cool in order to harden. And I just popped those out of the dishes super easily. Then I just took some sandpaper and sanded some of the rough edges down. This is like completely optional. And I know that this dish is already white. However, in the process of using clay, you always get some kind of debris in there. So I just took some white paint and painted it. For the other one, I used kind of like a dark navy blue, something that looks like the night sky. At first I tried watering down the paint because I thought it would go on smoother. That was a bad idea. Just stick to the regular concentrated paint. And I did do a couple layers just to make it pretty opaque. I tried to go in with a lighter hand with a lot of paint at one time, just so that the surface would look pretty even. So once the white dish was dry, I went in with some gold metallic paint and I just painted around the edges of the dish. This just makes it look a little bit more professional. Now for the center of the dish, I decided to go for a little sun action. So I just painted a circle very carefully. And then I just went in and did some sun rays. Some of them were a little curved, some were longer than others, some were short. We love diversity. After that, I moved on to the face. So I drew the eyebrows, I guess, and then just a line for the eyes and then the bottom lashes and then just the lips and we're finished. Oh no, just kidding, we're not. I decided to do some little sparkle thingies. So I drew some asterisks and just a couple dots and that is it. I think it looks so aesthetically pleasing. As for the night one, I also bordered the dish with some gold paint. For this one, I painted a crescent shape for the moon. Hopefully you guys have all seen the moon before. If you haven't, it's maybe time to like go outside and just see what nature has to offer because it's like kind of cool. And then I painted on some stars and dots to represent the night sky and the gold just really pops against the dark navy blue and I think it looks super, super cute. So I let those two dishes dry completely. You could leave them like this, but I wanted to make these shiny to look a little bit more put together and professional. So I got this Sculpey clay glaze and I just put a couple drops inside the dish and then used my paintbrush to spread it around the dish. This glaze actually works really, really well. However, Mod Podge will still work. It'll still seal it in and will give a nice sheen to it. So I ended up doing two layers on each dish on the front and the backside just to make it look extra shiny. This is how it finally turned out. I am legitimately so obsessed with these things. I think they're so freaking cute. I was gonna give these as presents to someone, but I think I literally am just gonna keep these because I think they're so cute and they're really not that hard to make. So maybe I'll just make them again. I don't know, but I am obsessed. ♪ Days into my days gone on ♪ So this next gift idea I made specifically with one of my friends in mind. She loves plants and succulents and I wanted to give her a plant for Christmas, but when you buy succulents with the pots, they are super, super expensive and I didn't wanna give her the succulent just in the boring container that it came in. So I decided to make my own plant holder and it just gives that customized touch. So I'm rolling out some more of that white polymer clay and as I'm rolling it out, I have to pop some of the bubbles that are underneath. So I just used my X-Acto knife to do that. You don't wanna make this too thin because it is going to be holding something. So once I rolled out a long piece of polymer clay, I used a straight edge. I was gonna use a ruler, but I literally could not find one anywhere, so I just used this canvas and used my X-Acto knife to cut out a rectangle. I wanted to stamp a pattern onto the plant holder because I felt like it was gonna be too boring. Oh, wait, I guess I did find a ruler. Anyway, I used my ruler and kinda just imprinted some stripes onto the bottom half of the piece of rectangle. At first, I just pressed the ruler in, but I found that the lines were a little bit too harsh. So then I started drawing the lines in and I found that those were a lot softer. Next, I rolled out a circular sheet of clay. This is going to be the bottom of the plant holder. And this one does have to be a little bit thicker because if it breaks, your plant is going RIP. I took my rolled out rectangular sheet and I kinda just made a circle by joining the edges together. Once I had a good enough circle, I used my X-Acto knife to trace out the circle onto the sheet of clay. Then I just removed the excess, which is honestly always the most satisfying part. In order to connect the top to the sheet of clay, I used the back of a paintbrush to just smooth the edges together to one, make sure that the seams were not visible, and two, to make sure that this plant holder did not fall apart. So I just did this all the way around the bottom and also on the seam where the ends of the rectangular piece came together. Once I finished smoothing out the edges, I took a little piece of clay. This is going to turn into the foot of the plant pot. So I kinda rolled this out in a conular shape, but flattened out the top and bottom so that it would be able to stand properly and not fall over. And to make sure that the pot would be standing on a flat surface, I took my X-Acto knife and kinda just sliced off the top layer. Then I just cloned that two times so that I had three feet in total. Then I went ahead and just baked that in the oven. I put it in for about 20 minutes. However, when I took it out, it became like super freaking lopsided as you can see. But anyway, I'm just gonna make myself feel better and just say it adds to the handmade look and the uniqueness. But really it's just me messing up and let's move on. I took some E6000 glue and my little feet, and I just glued it onto the bottom of the pot. Obviously you wanna space these out evenly so that your plant pot does not topple over. Once that's completely dry, your plant pot is ready to go. So originally I was just gonna stick the whole succulent planter inside with the original container. However, it was just slightly too tall. So I decided to just replant it because it would just look a lot more professional and put together and store-bought looking. So I just kinda uprooted the plant along with its soil and put it into my DIY plant holder. This is the final result. I think it turned out really, really, really cute. Honestly, making this yourself, especially if you use air dry clay, this will be a lot cheaper than the ones that you'll find in stores. And it's really not that hard to make. ♪ In those Gucci slides, yeah, yeah. ♪ ♪ I wonder where she hides under her disguise. ♪ ♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. ♪ ♪ And all the girls around the world, they wanna be it. ♪ ♪ And all the dudes that turn us on. ♪ So I hope you guys enjoyed this video and check out the merch if you are interested. Thank you guys so much for watching and supporting me. Shout out to the people who have stuck with me since the beginning. Shout out to the people who found me today. Shout out to the people who will find me in the future. I appreciate you guys all so much. I can't wait to see you guys in the merch. Please let me know on Instagram or Twitter or in the comments if you do end up getting anything because I would love to see you guys in the merch. Shout out of the week is right here. Yeah, I will see you guys next time. Bye. ♪ Talking loud, talking, talking loud, talking loud. ♪