Handmade gifts for teachers

Northwind Personalized Leather Bookmark

by Northwind

For the best sub-ten-dollar gift on this site. 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.

Handmade Essential Oil Soap Set, 5 Bars

For no shelf obligation, and it can be split. Five cold-process bars scented with essential oil rather than fragrance oil.

The distinction between essential oil and fragrance oil is the one that matters in soap: essential oils are distilled from plants and fade faster, fragrance oils are synthetic and last longer. Makers who use essential oil say so because it costs them more. Five bars is enough to split into two gifts if you need to.

Moonlight Makers Flour Sack Kitchen Towel

by Moonlight Makers

For something used at home rather than displayed at school. Hand-printed cotton flour sack — genuinely absorbent, unlike most printed towels.

Flour sack cotton is the only kitchen towel material that actually dries a glass rather than pushing water around it, and most printed novelty towels are not flour sack. This one is, and it is screen-printed by a small US studio rather than sublimated in bulk. Sixteen dollars, folds flat into a card envelope.

Northwind Personalized Full Grain Loop Keychain

by Northwind

For a class buying together. 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.

Engraved Wooden Spoon with Custom Message

For a message read while cooking. One solid beech spoon, engraved with a name or a line, for around twenty dollars.

The engraved-spoon gift works because it is a working object with something personal on the handle: it goes in the crock and gets picked up rather than being displayed and forgotten. Solid beech, engraved to order. It is also one of the few personalized items cheap enough to give to more than one person.

Woven Macrame Cotton Coasters, Pair

For a staffroom mug that leaves rings. 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 handed over on the last day of term. 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.

Natural Amor Citrus Spa Set, 5 Piece

by Natural Amor

For an end-of-year gift with more substance. 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.