 Hi friends, welcome back to my channel. Drew here from Lone Fox and I hope that you guys are ready to get into the holiday spirit because today we're gonna be DIYing some really cute holiday gift ideas that are perfect to add in addition to anyone's gifts that you're giving this season. I've done one of these videos for the past couple of years and I knew I wanted to do one this year as well and these gifts are perfect to gift alongside today's video sponsor, which is J Crew. When I got the email you guys at J Crew wanted to work on a holiday video together, I have been a longtime lover of J Crew. I've purchased clothing from them for years and years and years. It also feels really nostalgic for me to share clothing on the channel because if you guys didn't know before Lone Fox I actually had a fashion channel that I did for five years. It was my full time everything for about five years of my life before switching over to Lone Fox and all I did was share clothing over there. So it seems really nice right now to actually be sharing a couple pieces of clothing. So the first outfit is the coziest of all and you guys look at the interior of this set here. This is a jogger set. It kind of has a little pants. It also has this Henley crew neck, which I love this. I love that it's not a hoodie or a sweater. It's a Henley. It has a little bit more detail than your traditional, you know, just sweater. And then it's lined with like the softest, most plush fabric ever. Like if I got this for Christmas, I would be living in this. It is so cozy and soft and warm. It looks really cute on as well. I can wear this indoors and I can also totally wear it outside the house as well. This top right here is the next one I got and I love this one because I feel like it has like a retro bowling vibe to it and it also is a tan tone and it's knitted, but the quality of this piece, again, top notch, you guys. I wanna step back and show you the pants I'm wearing because these are also from J.Crew and the top is as well. Like, okay you guys, look at this simple little look. The jeans from J.Crew also fit so well. I absolutely love these. I'll put the proper name of them up on the screen for you guys. Jeans are hard for me to find. I'm not gonna lie, I have really skinny legs. I also really like the distressing on the knees a whole bunch. Sometimes distressing that's added to jeans, I feel like can look added, but this looks really natural and worn in. And my last look, I'm saving it for last because this is kind of like my essential outfit in winter always is an essential t-shirt which I get a lot of my essential t-shirts from J.Crew actually because their color selection is incredible. Look how cozy this is. It's just so soft and it's knitted and then I also got a pair of black denim and this black denim I thoroughly enjoy because they're a little bit high-waisted in a sense. Like you can pull them up a little bit higher and the cut of it is really straight. I really love it. The last piece I got, this jacket. Oh my gosh, you guys, I am obsessed with this jacket. I think it just looks so cute. It has a color blocking on it. We have the color of the dining room wall right here. We have the old color of the dining room wall right here. I'm gonna pop this on really quickly. Oh my gosh, you guys, look at this outfit. How cute is this jacket? I am obsessed with it, I have to crouch down. I don't know why I'm so tall today. I have the t-shirt on it from J.Crew, which I absolutely love. Just as you guys can see, nice and straight legs. They kind of have like a vintage quality to them, which is really nice. And then the jacket, I'm obsessed with it. It has like this nice shearling interior so it keeps you nice and warm and it's made of corduroy as well. So if you guys do not know where to shop at this holiday season, 100% check out J.Crew's website even just for a quick browse because they have so many really cute clothing pieces for yourself, for your loved ones and they also have a whole entire range of giftable items that are fully curated. So it's really easy to go on there and shop for really anybody, you guys. I promise to you, you will find something that you love. So I will link J.Crew at the top of the description box below and I thoroughly want to thank them so much for sending over so many incredible pieces for a winter time. But guys, we actually need to do a little bit of shopping. I'm going to get a few supplies and need to head to a couple of craft stores. Luckily I already have a lovely little look on courtesy of J.Crew. So we're gonna head to some craft stores, get our supplies, head back here and start DIYing our gifts. For our first project, we're keeping things extremely simple but super high quality. You're gonna love this one. So I started off firstly by breaking out my laptop and just typing out a couple different sizes of initials that I can then go ahead and print on my printer. So I printed those out here. This is LF for Lone Fox and as you can see, I pulled in this wood cutting board. This is from World Market. It was $30 but you can opt for whatever cutting board you'd like. You can find one on Amazon or wherever. I'll link this one below for you guys. And then once I found the initial that I personally liked the size of, I went in with my Xacto knife and I cut out the black part of the initial to essentially create a stencil which I would say is probably the hardest part of this entire DIY but you guys, it is totally worth it once you see this project. So you can go in and you can use initials, you can do a word, a phrase, whatever you wanna do. And once your stencil is all cut out, you can place it on top of your cutting board wherever you'd like it to go and use a pencil to just lightly mark over the top of your stencil to give yourself an indication of where your letters are gonna go and the shape of them for when you are wood burning. So this is what my letters ended up looking like, just cleaned it up a little bit there and I love it. This is just a simple Times New Roman font as well. And next what I did was I grabbed my wood burning tool. You can get these super inexpensive online or at a craft store. It's a great tool to use to customize really any project. And I went in with the really fine tip and just lightly traced over the top of the markings just to get familiar with the tool. And then once I have it pretty much burned in the wood, I also go in with a bit of a deeper hand or a little bit more of a pressure and that just allows you to kind of etch it into the wood, which I really love the way that that looks. And then on the backside of the board, I also thought it would be cute just to add a little heart with my name on it to gift it to whoever you'd want to. Of course, I'm gonna be keeping this piece for myself because I think it is adorable for my kitchen. So I just added a little heart and drew to the backside. Now the board of course is an amazing gift on its own, but I also thought it would be really cute to go ahead and create a spoon just to kind of gift as a set alongside. So I traced that L and the F on the spoon and I just went in with my wood burning tool and burned out the LF on there as well. And I'm gonna package these together with just a little bit of suede cording, which I think looks so cute. Now I'm not too sure if the spoon is usable. Let me know in the comment section below, but I do think it's just really cute to kind of have in a little crock in the kitchen and this is our finished piece. This next gift here is perfect for any pet lover. We're gonna be creating some really cute pet bowls, perfect for a small dog or a cat. So I grabbed two ceramic bowls and a paint pen. And then I went on Pinterest to look for some ideas and actually came across these adorable pet bowls that Molly from Almost Makes Perfect create. I used to read her blog all the time. I still do and I love her projects. I think these are so cute. I wanted to actually recreate these and I give 100% credit to her. And the fun thing about this project is it's really, really forgiving. All you have to do is go in with your paint pen, simply trace on some random abstract shapes as I am doing here. So I just wanted to go ahead and get an outline for all of my shapes to start. And then I'd figure I'd go back afterwards and then fill them in because you are gonna wanna let the paint dry down for like a minute or so before touching it because it definitely has the option of smearing. But all you have to do is simply fill it in with your paint pen. And it's actually very, very therapeutic. I love coloring on top of glossy ceramic with a paint pen. It feels so nice on the hand. So as you can see here, as you fill them in, they just look so nice and bold. Keep in mind you can also go in with whatever color you'd like and I used a skewer to actually scrape away any excess paint pen that kind of wasn't on the surface. Now a final step if you wanna do this as well, you can go in with a coat of dishwasher safe mod podge. However, I will say you guys, this does not leave your lines completely clean. They do have the slightest bit of bleed on the edge. However, I think it looks really nice and you're able to wash them in the dishwasher. Next up my friends, we have this really cute incense holder and I love this one in particular because we're also gonna be creating some custom incense sticks to go along with it. So it's great for anybody who already loves incense or might be getting into it. So our first step is gonna be rolling out our clay. This is some simple white polymer clay and I'm rolling it out to about a quarter inch thick and I'm gonna go ahead and use a little mixing bowl like this one to create a circular shape. You can really use whatever size you want. I probably opted for about a four inch wide circle for my incense holder, but keep in mind you can make it whatever size you'd like. Now what I did after I kind of pressed in my bowl was I went around the top rim with an X-Acto knife just to make sure that it was nice and clean on that edge there. Now the next step I did, which I thought was the cutest, was I went in with a stamp set, just a rubber stamp set. I stamped an L and an F towards the top rim there as you can see and then I flipped this over, placed it on top of the bowl just to get an idea for the shape that we're gonna go for and also to find kind of the middle point of our piece and then I pulled it off to indent our little incense stick into the middle there as you can see it's standing straight up and down and then I flipped it back over to bake right on top of our bowl there. So I'm gonna pop this in the oven for about half of an hour, but while that's baking, we're actually going to be creating some incense sticks and yes, you can totally purchase blank incense sticks online. I had no idea and all you have to do is fill them up with your favorite essential oil or fragrance oil, just kind of coat that incense and let it soak in and then let it dry for about half of an hour and you're good to go. So working our way back to our incense holder, I went ahead and I took it out of the oven and it looks just perfect. I slipped the incense stick in and as you can see it holds it perfectly. Now we're gonna paint this and you can totally opt for whatever you would like in terms of painting. You can do a pattern, a texture. I just went in with this terracotta finished paint that I found at the craft store. It already has like a sandy finish to it. So I just went in and I painted it all the way around. I do suggest going in with like a light brush of paint over the top of your initials so you don't fill them in or anything and I personally opted for two coats, front and back for the entire piece. To seal this piece and make sure it's really easy to clean up when those ashes from the incense gets in there. I just went in with a gloss glaze. That way it was nice and wipeable and that finishes off our incense holder and custom sticks. Save my personal favorite project for last because this one is a tradition for me. Every single year I get my mom a scarf for Christmas. She's always been a hockey mom so she's always cold essentially. Now I'm referencing a old video that I did where I created a knitted blanket because it's much easier to show you guys the stitches. So what you're gonna start off by doing is grab your yarn and create a simple slip knot. So all you have to do once your knot is created is just slip two of your fingers through and pull your working yarn through to create your next loop. This is gonna be our first loop of the chain. So you're gonna create as many loops in your chain as you want the width of your scarf to be. Now keep in mind this footage here is actually from a blanket but it's a lot easier to actually see the process in this kind of clip. So what you're gonna do once your chain is done is you're actually going to slip your fingers through each hole in your chain and pull a loop through that's a decent size loop making sure to keep each of your loops at a similar width. Basically the larger the loop that you pull through the more loose your actual knit is going to be. Just make sure to keep the loops at the same size. It'll look a lot more cohesive in the end. Now once you reach the end there you're gonna go ahead and create a loop and then just do one more loop where you're pulling through essentially creating a chain and you're just gonna work your way back down pulling loops through each of those loops you previously created. That's why it's nice to have them large enough to stick your fingers through because you could simply pull each loop through as you go and this is going to be our knitting process so let's dive into the scarf. So for the scarf we're gonna be doing the same exact process but with four pieces of yarn. So I made sure to get some nice chunky fluffy textured yarns and really cute colors and I'm gonna first start off by creating a slipknot by simply looping my yarn through and this is why I wanted to show you with one piece of yarn because this process does get a little hard to follow on camera but what I'm gonna be doing now is creating my chain stitch and I ended up doing eight chains for the width of my scarf. That's gonna be how wide you want it, not how long you want it. So I did eight of those chain stitches and then once I reach the end we're gonna start the actual process of knitting or adding loops to our chain and that process is actually really, really simple. All you have to do is reach your fingers through the hole of your four yarns, pull through a loop on the back end and work your way down. So just kind of reach through your chain that you created, pull through all four strands and this is why I was saying it's a lot easier for me to show you the process with a singular strand because all of these strands combined together it's kind of hard to see where each of them is and it is I'm gonna say a little bit time consuming just trying to make sure that you're always pulling through all four strands but the product in the end is totally worth it. So as you work your way down you're just gonna pull through loops you guys. It is extremely easy keep them at the same width as you go. Keep in mind the longer the loop or the wider the loop the looser your knit is gonna be but adding more yarn to your piece creates a more chunkier, fluffier and warmer appearance in the end. So from here on out it is extremely repetitive. All you have to do is pull your loops through the previous loop that you created and continue the process. I kind of slowed this down but also kept it fast so you guys can see how I'm working from left to right and you never have to flip it or do anything like that. You're gonna work from left to right and I always suggest after doing a full row just pulling out all four strands of yarn so you have a lot of working yarn and it's not tugging away because once your balls get kind of tied up or tangled together or anything like that the knitting kind of gets a little bit awkward so I do suggest pulling through your yarn to start and then as you work it's just a lot easier to go so if you have to go back and adjust anything do not feel bad about that at all. As you can see here I kind of struggled for a second and then I went back through pulling through my loops and I feel like it's just a lot more easy to see what I'm doing on screen as opposed to hearing me talk about it. So once you have your desired length we're gonna go ahead and finish off the piece. All you have to do to finish it off is grab the left loop and then pull the one directly to the right of it through the center of that loop and continue that process just pulling the loop from the right through the middle. I'm gonna zoom in a bit here so you can see a little bit easier. Taking that right loop, pulling it right through the center of that left and then taking the right one once again so that basically you're left with a singular loop once you are completely done and you're just gonna pull your working yarn through that singular loop and that finishes off your scarf. Tie those extra yarn pieces into a double or triple knot and then you can go ahead and just cut those off and that finishes off your scarf but of course I had to take it one step further. We're gonna be adding fringe to this you guys because how could I not add fringe with all these yummy yarn textures? So here is one end with the fringe. Now I'm gonna go ahead and add fringe to the other side. So what I did to add the fringe was I just cut all four pieces of yarn and I cut it to probably I would say 16 inches in length because we're gonna be folding this over and then pulling the end through the loop that we create and they're gonna basically end up being eight inches in length. And here is how you do that. Simply fold that yarn in half and grab that loop that you kind of folded in half and then pull your end through. That's all you have to do and you guys I just kind of blindly added it to the end there because it was so textural and I couldn't even see the loops I was adding it into. I just added fringe wherever I thought that it fit and once it looked nice and full I was good to go. I just kind of combed them out at the end there and then I gave a blunt little chop so everything looked a little bit more cohesive because this scarf is really crazy with all the colors and textures. I wanted a nice blunt cut just to kind of finish it off and let's say you missed a loop while knitting all you have to do is just tie that loop into a knot and cut off your extra thread there and it's just gonna be hidden on the inside of your scarf anyway. So do not worry about that. I actually missed several loops, probably 20 to 25 loops and I just tied them in a simple knot there, cut off the extra. It was a lot of the velvet yarn. It was a bit heavier and that finished off our scarf. And those are all of the DIY gifts today you guys. I hope that you enjoyed this video. I love the outcome of each of these gifts. I feel like there's definitely something in this video for a lot of different people in your life. We have the cutting board for the person that cooks or entertains, a scarf for someone who likes to be cozy. And keep in mind, this is not my only DIY gift video I've ever done. I have two more on the channel. Actually might even be three more on the channel, which I'll make sure to link in the description box below in case you wanna check out past year's DIY projects. And once again, you guys, oh, I forgot. I'm literally wearing my J Crew outfit. I am obsessed with my J Crew pieces. I love this T-shirt. It might be one of my favorites. It's just such an essential piece made of cashmere, like a cashmere blend. It's so soft and I love this shirt layered over the top of it. If you haven't done much holiday shopping this year, whether it be for gifts, maybe a holiday party look, definitely check out J Crew, you guys. They have clothing for really everybody on top of a really cute curated gift guide as well. So I'll link them at the top of the description box below and make sure to check them out. And I wanna thank them again for sponsoring today's video. I will catch you guys all in my next one. Have an amazing rest of your day. And if you're gonna create any of these DIY gifts, let me know which one in the comment section below. I would love to hear. Bye guys.