In the next few weeks, my husband and I will be celebrating our 13th wedding anniversary. According to wedding anniversary tradition the gift for 13 years is lace. I don’t think we ever managed to keep up with more than the first anniversary being paper and a token origami gift!
This started me thinking about what can be gifted using lace and how can this be made into a little eco gift?
Lace is a decorative web of fabrics that are carefully woven together to make patterns. Although it’s actual origin is disputed, it can be dated back to the 16th century and became very popular in places like France. The hand sewing was a very time consuming process and often very expensive and seen as a luxury, reserved often for royalty.
More modern techniques mean that this delicate fabric doesn’t have to be hand sewn and can be mass produced in ribbons. Lace made from organic cotton is a good sustainable option for decorating items as it makes a pretty trim.
This post has lead me to a few different ideas all coming together in a medley. It is a tea light jam jar from the cookies in a jar post, with a Macramé hanger made of rustic string, decorated with a lace trim.
My friend who runs the ladies crafts evenings with our church that I blogged about in the Macramé post made the hanger as an eco gift idea for me and I really like it. It is quite a straightforward pattern made from some garden jute that can be bought at any local garden center. The four arms are made from square knots with wooden Macramé beads. This one has different patterns on opposite arms but they can be all the same if preferred. They can also be knotted from the bottom like in this tutorial:
I finished my jar with a lace trim so it can be used as a pretty table decoration too, maybe for a romantic meal together to celebrate our anniversary.
Any jar will work with a little tea light inside. Altogether it is a gift that can be made for under £2, which is the budget for the school gifts where we are trying to find gift ideas that don’t use single use plastic, and looks quite effective.
I could see this working well for a Mother’s Day stall at school next year. I actually have a few ideas that use Mason jars so it might be a ‘jars of love’ stall. For example filled with chocolates, body scrubs and lotions, manicure in a jar, recipes or sweet treats or even simple kind words, all different ways to show someone that you care. The jars could be bought in mass quantity to keep the cost down and the children could then choose how to fill and decorate them. They can be reused and recycled too, making them a lovely eco gift choice.
Little Eco Gifts 
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