Handmade gifts for coworkers

Northwind Personalized Full Grain Valet Tray

by Northwind

For the safest sub-thirty gift there is. Full grain, made in the USA, personalized, and still under thirty dollars.

Valet trays are the single most reliable gift for someone you do not know well: everyone has keys, and nobody buys themselves a tray to put them in. Full grain at this price is unusual and is the reason this one is here rather than one of the dozen near-identical listings. The snap corners flatten for shipping, which also makes it easy to wrap.

Northwind Personalized Leather Bookmark

by Northwind

For a reader, and a Secret Santa cap. Full grain leather, stamped with a name, under ten dollars.

A leather bookmark is the rare cheap gift with no downside: it does not take up shelf space, it does not need dusting, and a reader will use it every day. Full grain means it flattens into the book rather than curling out of it. This is the best sub-ten-dollar gift on the whole site.

Natural Amor Citrus Spa Set, 5 Piece

by Natural Amor

For no shelf obligation at all. The citrus alternative to every lavender spa box on the marketplace.

Roughly nine in ten handmade spa sets are lavender, which is a safe scent and also a boring one — and wrong for anyone using the products in the morning. Citrus is the same format with a different register. Five pieces including handmade soap, which is the component most spa boxes skimp on.

Northwind Personalized Full Grain Loop Keychain

by Northwind

For buying twelve of the same thing. Full grain leather, personalized, and under thirteen dollars.

Full grain at this price is unusual, and it is the reason this beats the dozens of near-identical loop keychains: cheap keychain leather cracks at the fold within a year, full grain does not. Personalization is stamped rather than printed. This is the most repeatable gift on the site — it works for a class, a team, a wedding party or a stocking.

Woven Macrame Cotton Coasters, Pair

For a desk that gets a mug on it every day. Nine dollars for two hand-knotted cotton coasters — the cheapest way to finish a gift box.

A board, a mug and a candle is a good gift box and a hard one; it is all hard edges. Two cotton coasters change the texture for under ten dollars. Absorbent and washable, unlike cork or slate, which is the practical argument for cotton coasters generally.

The Little Flower Soap Co Bath Bomb Set

by The Little Flower Soap Co

For a gift that needs no wrapping. Five bath bombs in a macaron box — presentation doing a lot of the work, deliberately.

Bath bombs are a commodity and everyone knows it, so what separates one from another is the packaging and the ingredients list. The macaron box means this needs no wrapping, which is worth something when you are posting a gift. Buy it for a colleague, a teacher, or anyone where the gesture matters more than the object.

Personalized Leather Catchall Tray

For fifteen of something, on a per-head budget. The sub-twenty option, and the one to buy in quantity for a team.

Corporate and team gifting fails when the per-head budget forces you into branded plastic. A small personalized leather dish clears that bar and does not look like swag. Buy one to check the quality before you commit to fifteen — worth doing at any price, and especially at this one.

Whiskey and Bourbon Flavored Lip Balm

For a white-elephant draw with a strict cap. Six dollars fifty, funny once, and actually usable afterwards.

The white-elephant category is full of things that get binned in January. This one lands the joke and then goes in a coat pocket and gets used, which is the entire bar for a novelty gift. Handmade balm, so it is a real product with a real ingredient list rather than a printed tube of nothing.