There is a moment at Christmas.
Someone opens a present.
They look at it.
Then they look at you and say:
“Where did you find this?”
Not:
“How much was it?”
Not:
“Which big shop did this come from?”
But:
“I've never seen anything like this before.”
For me, that's one of the lovely things about buying handmade.
In a world where we can order almost anything at the touch of a button and have it arrive on our doorstep remarkably quickly, handmade gifts offer something a little different.
They have a person behind them.
A story.
Thought.
Time.
And sometimes, quite a lot of glitter.
So as someone who has been running a handmade business since 2013, I thought I'd share why I believe buying handmade can make Christmas feel just that little bit more special.
Handmade begins before you place your order
Something I've realised over the years is that customers usually only see the very end of the process.
You see the finished bauble.
The personalised ornament.
The travel gift.
The beautifully packaged keepsake.
What you don't necessarily see are all the things that happened before that product ever appeared on the website.
Someone had the idea.
Someone designed it.
Someone experimented with it.
Someone ordered materials.
Someone made a prototype.
Someone decided it wasn't quite right.
Someone made another one.
Someone photographed it.
Someone wrote the description.
And eventually...
you found it.
With a handmade product, the making often begins long before the customer arrives.
You're buying from an actual person
This sounds obvious, but I think it's easy to forget when we're shopping online.
When you place an order with a small handmade business, somewhere an actual person sees it arrive.
In the case of Georgina Kay Designs...
Hello. That's me. 👋
There's no enormous warehouse hidden behind my website.
There's no mysterious production department.
If you order a personalised bauble from me, I'm the person who makes it.
If you send a message, I'm the person answering you.
If you ask whether we can change a colour, alter some wording or create something slightly different, it's me working out whether we can make it happen.
And when an order comes through?
Yes, after all these years, I still like seeing them arrive.
Your order actually matters
This is perhaps one of the biggest differences between shopping with a small business and shopping with a huge retailer.
Your individual order matters.
I don't mean that in a sentimental, please-buy-from-small-businesses sort of way.
I mean it quite literally.
Every sale contributes to whether a small business succeeds.
When you order from an independent maker, you're helping them buy the next batch of materials.
Pay the website bill.
Invest in new equipment.
Develop another product.
Keep doing the thing they've built.
One order might be almost invisible on the balance sheet of an enormous international retailer.
For a small business?
We notice.
And we notice when you come back
This is one of my favourite things.
I'll sometimes see a familiar customer name appear.
Someone who ordered last Christmas.
Or several Christmases ago.
Perhaps I made their:
First Christmas Together bauble.
Then later:
First Christmas Engaged.
Then:
Our First Christmas Married.
And now they're ordering:
Baby's First Christmas.
I can't describe how lovely that is.
I've never met most of these customers.
But somehow I've been allowed to make little markers for the chapters of their lives.
That's one of the things I never expected when I started Georgina Kay Designs.
Handmade isn't the same as homemade
I think this distinction is important.
Sometimes the word handmade makes people picture something cobbled together at the kitchen table with glue and a hopeful expression.
Although, to be fair, some excellent businesses have started exactly like that.
Handmade simply means that human hands are part of creating the finished product.
It doesn't mean amateur.
Small makers spend years learning their craft.
They invest in professional equipment.
They source materials.
They refine techniques.
They learn what works and, occasionally, discover what very definitely doesn't.
I've been creating personalised gifts since 2013.
There are things I can do now almost instinctively that took me far longer when I first started.
That's experience.
And that's part of what you're buying too.
Handmade gifts don't have to be perfect clones
Here's something else I love.
When something has been individually made or finished by hand, there may occasionally be tiny differences between pieces.
That's not necessarily a flaw.
It's part of the process.
With my glitter baubles, for example, each one is individually prepared and personalised.
Names differ in length.
Wording changes.
Colours change.
Ribbon combinations change.
Placement has to work with each particular design.
Your bauble isn't simply being stamped out identically thousands of times.
It's being made for your order.
That's what makes it yours.
Personalisation takes handmade one step further
This is where things get really special for me.
A handmade product already has a person behind it.
But a personalised handmade product has two stories behind it.
The maker's...
and yours.
I might create the bauble.
But you decide whose name goes on it.
You choose the date.
The colour.
The occasion.
The message.
Perhaps you're celebrating a new baby.
A wedding.
A first home.
An anniversary.
A new pet.
Or remembering somebody who isn't with you this Christmas.
That's the moment when something I've made stops being simply one of my products.
It becomes yours.
Handmade gifts can say, “I really thought about you”
We've probably all received a panic-bought Christmas present.
And we've probably all given one too.
No judgement here.
It's December 23rd.
You're standing in a shop.
You've forgotten somebody.
At that point, anything in a vaguely festive box is starting to look promising. 😂
But the gifts people tend to remember are often the ones that show thought.
Something connected to their hobby.
Their family.
Their pet.
Their favourite colour.
A place they love.
A date that matters.
An inside joke.
You see the present and immediately think:
“That's so me.”
That's a wonderful reaction to a gift.
And handmade and personalised products make that much easier to achieve.
You can often ask for something different
This is another advantage of shopping small.
With a mass-produced product, what you see is generally what you get.
With a handmade business, there may be a little more flexibility.
Could the wording be changed?
Could we use another colour?
Could a name be added?
Could this design work for a slightly different occasion?
Sometimes the answer will be no – there are always practical limitations.
But quite often the answer is:
“Yes, I think we can do that.”
Some of my product ideas have actually come from customer requests.
Someone asks:
“Could you make something for...?”
And my brain immediately goes:
Ooh.
Dangerous.
Because now I have another idea.
Your gift has travelled through someone's hands
I think there's something rather lovely about this.
Before your handmade Christmas gift reaches the person you're giving it to, somebody has actually sat and worked on it.
They've touched it.
Checked it.
Finished it.
Packed it.
In my case, I might have:
Prepared your bauble.
Added the glitter.
Created the personalised design.
Applied the lettering.
Tied the two ribbons.
Checked the spelling.
Placed it into its gift box.
Wrapped it in tissue.
Packed the order.
Printed the postage.
And sent it on its way.
Then it arrives with you.
And eventually you hand it to somebody else.
There's a little chain of people involved in that present.
I like that.
You're helping keep skills alive
Handmade businesses exist across an enormous range of crafts.
Ceramics.
Jewellery.
Woodwork.
Sewing.
Knitting.
Illustration.
Candles.
Glass.
Paper craft.
Embroidery.
Printing.
Personalisation.
And hundreds more.
When people buy handmade, they create a reason for those skills to continue.
A maker can only keep making if somebody values what they're creating.
And when that happens, something wonderful occurs.
Skills develop.
Businesses grow.
New products appear.
And more people realise that making things can actually become a career.
Small businesses create wonderfully strange things
This is another reason I love independent businesses.
Large retailers need products that appeal to lots of people.
Small businesses can afford to create something that appeals passionately to a much smaller group.
That means you find:
The incredibly specific gift.
The unusual hobby.
The obscure reference.
The colour combination you'd never see in a department store.
The product you didn't know existed until you saw it.
Small businesses can be a little weird.
I mean that as an enormous compliment.
Because people are a little weird too.
And that's what makes gift shopping interesting.
You don't have to buy everything handmade
I should probably say this.
I'm not going to pretend every single thing under your Christmas tree needs to come from an independent maker.
I shop with big businesses too.
Most small-business owners do.
There are things large retailers do incredibly well.
There are things handmade businesses do incredibly well.
Christmas doesn't need to become some sort of moral shopping examination where you feel guilty about where every present came from.
Instead, perhaps just make room for a few things with a story.
One handmade decoration.
A personalised gift.
Something from a local maker.
Something you found at a Christmas market.
Something made by an independent business online.
Mix it all together.
That's how most of us actually shop.
And handmade doesn't always mean expensive
There's a misconception that buying from small businesses automatically means spending a fortune.
It doesn't.
Handmade products exist at almost every price point.
Sometimes the best small-business Christmas purchase is exactly that:
small.
A decoration.
A pin badge.
A keyring.
A little keepsake.
Something that costs less than the big present but somehow feels more personal.
Thoughtfulness doesn't have a minimum spend.
The Christmas tree is a perfect example 🎄
Look at the decorations people treasure.
They're rarely twenty identical baubles from a box.
They're the individual ones.
The one bought on holiday.
The one made by a child.
The one inherited from Nan.
The personalised one from baby's first Christmas.
The handmade ornament from a little Christmas market.
The one someone gave you years ago.
They don't necessarily match.
But they have stories.
And eventually those stories become the thing that makes your Christmas tree yours.
When you buy handmade, you might be buying somebody's future
This is something customers probably don't think about.
But your orders allow small businesses to try things.
When customers support a product, it gives the maker confidence to develop another.
Buy new equipment.
Learn another technique.
Create another collection.
Take a risk.
Grow.
Somebody ordering one of my early products in 2013 couldn't possibly have known what Georgina Kay Designs would look like thirteen years later.
Neither did I!
But every order helped it get here.
That's quite extraordinary when I think about it.
Then comes the happy dance
People joke that when you buy from a small business, somebody does a little happy dance.
I can't guarantee the physical dance happens every time.
That could become exhausting during Christmas season.
But the feeling behind it is absolutely true.
A new order isn't simply a number increasing on a screen.
Someone has looked at something you created and decided:
“I want that.”
Even after years of doing this, that's a lovely feeling.
And when someone returns?
Even better.
Because then they're effectively saying:
“I liked what you made last time. I trust you to make something again.”
That's huge.
Behind every small business is a story
Mine started in 2013.
I couldn't possibly have known then how many products I'd make, how many customers I'd meet online or how large Christmas would eventually become for Georgina Kay Designs.
Over the years there have been new products, different ideas, mistakes, successes, very late nights, mountains of packaging and enough glitter to remain discoverable in my home for several centuries.
But the basic idea hasn't really changed.
Make something personal that somebody will love giving – and somebody else will love receiving.
That's still the bit that matters.
This Christmas, look for the story behind the gift
Whether you buy from Georgina Kay Designs or another small business this Christmas, take a moment to look at the person behind what you're buying.
Read their About page.
Follow their social media.
Visit a local Christmas market.
Ask whether something can be personalised.
Look for the products that aren't available everywhere else.
Because sometimes you're not simply buying a present.
You're buying something that started as an idea in somebody's head.
Something they designed.
Something they learned how to make.
Something they created with their own hands.
And then, wonderfully...
something that becomes part of somebody else's story.
That's what I love about handmade.
It's personal on both sides.
So this Christmas, amongst the big boxes and familiar brands, perhaps leave a little room under the tree for something made by a small business.
I promise you...
we'll notice.
Georgina x 🎄✨