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Children are no longer the only ones to use only their little hands, and their imagination, to please adults during the end-of-year celebrations. Do It Yourself could be the essential guest of this Christmas Eve, whether to cope with inflation or limit waste, or even simply to stand out with a fully personalized creative gift. Explanations.
If handmade, or homemade, has existed for many years, it literally exploded in 2020 with the Covid pandemic and its successive confinements. A survey carried out by Toluna for I Make revealed at the time that more than four in ten French people (43%) planned to use DIY for the end-of-year holidays, showing a growing interest in this practice. Three years later, the latter has become anchored in consumer habits, throughout the year, and more specifically in the run-up to Christmas. Handmade gifts have become commonplace, no longer just to celebrate Secret Santa or keep the children busy during the holidays, but to offer less expensive and more eco-responsible presents without compromising on the pleasure they will give to the person who receives them. will open.
During the end-of-year holidays, social media users seem to no longer swear by DIY with no less than 2.3 billion views for the hashtag #christmasdiy on TikTok, while Christmas gifts made house have their own keywords which have already generated tens of millions of views. Among the most popular are cosmetics (soaps, bath bombs, treatments), decorative objects (candles, jewelry holders, personalized plates), and even jewelry. All of this can, given the videos published, easily be done at the last minute. If social networks and practical books are preferred sources for DIY, as are specialized sites, some people take homemade products even further by participating in workshops to make gifts worthy of major brands.
Personalization and environmental issues
Today, for example, it is possible to participate in workshops lasting one, two hours, or more, to make your own jewelry or cosmetics and personalize it according to your desires – or according to the person who is making it. will receive. This is what many players in the genre offer, such as Wecandoo, Funbooker, or Ateliers d’Aliénor, which allow you to learn how to create your own pieces, whatever they may be, for an ever-increasing gift. creative and personal. Unusual gifts which, if they come from DIY, still have a cost much higher than what you can make more easily at home – most of the time at least – justified by experience and ‘learning.
The French cosmetics brand Bâton Rouge offers the same possibility but to co-create tailor-made and eco-responsible lipsticks. With a make-up artist, she offers to develop the color, then the texture and the finish, as well as the perfume of said lipstick in her Parisian boutique. And satisfaction is at the heart of this unique experience since the customer has the opportunity to test the product until it is perfectly suited to their daily use. Beyond personalization, the idea is to get a lipstick that will not end up at the bottom of a case, failing to meet your needs.
Taken by storm as the end-of-year holidays approach, these workshops appear to be an ideal solution for combining originality, tailor-made, and eco-responsibility for Christmas. And if it is too late to try the experience a few days before New Year’s Eve, it is entirely possible to offer it to those around you to allow them to learn DIY. Note also that many French cities, including Paris, also offer numerous workshops – and sometimes even Christmas markets – entirely dedicated to DIY. The idea again being to make your own gifts from nothing, or not much, or even to make them using upcycling using clothing and other objects destined to be thrown away.