Are you still on the hunt for gifts for your creative friends or family members? Need last minute inspiration to tackle the “what the heck should I buy” situation? Worry no more! In this post, I’m sharing 25 amazing gift ideas from eco-conscious to practical, from on budget to luxury. All from follow-worthy brands.

DISCLAIMER: I'm an affiliate partner of Creative Market but I’m not an affiliate for any of the other recommended companies in this post. I recommend them because I honestly think that they are cool and helpful for entrepreneurs and creatives.

Does your creative friend travel a lot? These gifts will make her travel time much more enjoyable.

My hubby is a big tech fan, so when he ordered these noise cancelling headphones I was just thinking “another gadget that we don’t really need”. But then we flew to Hawaii (a demanding trip of 6 hours to Los Angeles and 6 hours to Kona with a 4 hour break at LAX). I was super tired because I only had 3 hours of sleep, so my hubby gave me these to wear between the two flights.

And wow! It was like escaping the noisy airport cacophonia to my private zen garden where I only hear what I really want to hear, not the annoying chatter of a thousand passengers. Worked well on the plane too, totally filtering out the white noise from the engines. It helped both me and my son to fall asleep easily.

So if your bestie travels a lot, likes music (or silence), or maybe works in a noisy co-work space like my hubby, get these for her ASAP.

Price: $349 USD

​​​​​Have your creative friend ever took a trip that was so AHHMAZING that she wanted to record every moment of it? I mean with photos, videos and even by journaling about her experience?

I recently found my diary from high school, and read through my summer entries of hiking through the West-Hungarian countryside with my BFFs. It was hilarious, nostalgic (in a fun and happy way) and brought back memories that I’ve totally forgot over the years.

This experience made me turn back to journaling to record our vacations and big or small family adventures.

If your loved one likes this idea, this journal from Rifle Paper Co. would be a great travel notebook for her. It’s good quality and inexpensive with a cute character and nice details. 

Price: $15 USD

Does your friend travels to conferences and business meeting a lot? Or is she a “let’s explore the whole world” type of gal?

Let’s be honest, travelling with quadrillion suitcases and overflowing tote bags isn’t fun. Getting pickpocketed while abroad is even less of a happy treat. And not receiving your checked in suitcase with all your clothes is the worst (happened with my hubby multiple times).

On my best and easiest flights, I only took one cabin size suitcase and a laptop backpack. Sure, it’s not always easy to pack this way, especially for family vacations, but for solo flights this is the best way to go.

PacSafe makes amazing backpacks: good quality, water resistant and the safest on the market. Depending on the model, you get uncuttable fabric, lockable zips, and RFID scam protection (so your PayPass Visa card won’t get credited on a crowded bus in the middle of Hong Kong).

I currently have my eye on these 3 PacSafe backpacks:

• Metrosafe LS450 anti-theft 25L backpack ($119.95 USD) for everyday use, school, city tours and short hikes.
• Venturesafe X 24L anti-theft backpack ($154.95 USD, right now on sale for $104.97 USD) for longer hikes and city tours 
• Venturesafe EXP45 anti-theft 45L carry-on travel pack ($189.95 USD) when you don’t want to take any other luggage. This one is perfect for a long weekend or minimalist-style backpacking.

This portable iPhone charger is a life saver with 16 hours of extra battery life for your phone. Not to mention that it’s super chic and lightweight. Includes built-in lightning cable and charging cord, so you can leave your regular cable at the hotel.

You can also buy matching phone cases from Sonix.

One thing I love about Anthropologie (OK, it’s hard to choose just one…) is that they contract independent artists and crafters for some of their products. So if you buy this lovely and sturdy passport holder, you’ll not just make your on-the-go friend’s life easier, you also support a small business (and get a good excuse to browse through Anthro’s website).

Price: $24 USD

If your creative friend’s idea of an afternoon well-spent is to browse over an entire Michael’s or the webshop of Rifle Paper Co., these gifts will well suit her? Because for some of us, we just can’t have enough journals, pens and unicorn shaped erasers.

These journals are super stylish and they come with a beautiful golden pen (attached to the notebook with a loop).

Great place to jot down your ideas, journal about your business dreams and plans.

It’s also more personal, given the monogram cover. You can decide to buy one with the monogram of the recipient or go from A to Z if your friend plans to fill an entire library of these.

Price: $18 USD

As soon as I saw this wall calendar at my favorite book store, I was in love.

This gift is also great for repurposing: it works as a wall calendar in 2019 and then you can turn the beautiful illustrations into wall art. Just cut the pictures and frame them and you’ll have decoration for your office.

Great for those who are inspired by travelling, foreign cultures and cute, quirky illustration.

Price: $26 USD

​​​​​After long research, last year I found the perfect paper planner.

Paper? - you ask.

Yep, I’m that kind of girl who has to write things down, otherwise they fall through the cracks. If your creative friend faces the same - and she constantly nags you to check her favorite planners - she’ll love this system.

These planners made by Inkwell Press Productivity Co. are great for many reasons:

• The disc system makes the planner customizable: insert the pages you really need, get rid of those you don’t
• Less expense next year: planners, especially this quality can cost a lot. But with this system, next year you only have to buy the inserts. The cover, dividers and discs remain the same.
• High quality paper: no matter what pen you use, the ink won’t bleed through the pages, and they won’t rip out from the discs.
• Based on real productivity in mind: Tonya Dalton, the founder of Inkwell Press has many years of experience in productivity and goal setting. So she won’t include unnecessary pages in these planners, just what you really need. Don’t believe me? Check her podcast, The Productivity Paradox to find out more. 

Price is based on how you build up your planner system. It starts around $52 USD if you need a weekly planner setup.

Another amazing tool for planner fans. Powersheets aren't your ordinary weekly or daily planner, instead this tool focuses on setting the best goals for your next year.

This planner is also great because it makes you face your fears and dreams and really prepare for your yearly planning session. Without proper planning, you won’t be able to reach real results.

If your loved one had problems with reaching bigger goals or building healthy, positive habits, this is a perfect gift for her. You can either pick from the 4 color versions or give her a Cultivate What Matters gift card.

​Or pretty much anything from Tombow…

Most of their markers are water based, which means that you can easily blend the colors and get watercolor-like results. The pens have a flexible, pressure sensitive tip, that’s perfect from finer to thicker lines.

If your creative friend wants to learn brush lettering and calligraphy, this set is perfect to start learning it. Otherwise, Tombow markers are just equally fun for everyday doodling in journals and planners. 

There’s something self-pampering about reading a magazine. Maybe because nowadays we collect most of the information and inspiration from the internet. The calming feel of real paper, printed and nicely edited text just begs for some me-time.

If you want to give inspiration for your creative friend and also help her spend less time on Pinterest and more time next to the fireplace with a cup of tea and something useful to read, magazine subscriptions can be the answer.

I picked up one before our trip, just by its cover (and also because they featured an artist I follow on Instagram). It’s called In Her Studio and it quickly became a new favorite. Beside learning about other artists’, crafters’ and designers’ work method, I’ve got many new ideas thanks to their beautiful studio places. This magazine also gives lots of organization ideas for crafters and artists and it includes stunning photos. 

Price: $14.99 USD

There are also many other great magazines for designers, brand specialists and crafters. Take some time to flip through them at a nearby newspaper stand and then subscribe online.

Another great source of inspiration: books… (I guess you are not surprised). There are so many great titles, it’s really hard to choose. Here are some of my suggestions:

• If your friend has a hard time with making up a business plan because she’s not so analytical, more of a bohemian artist type, The Right Brain Business Plan by Jennifer Lee will be perfect for her ($15.82 USD).
• If your friend needs help in branding and marketing, check my post from last week with the 5 must-have branding books. Any of these are must-haves for entrepreneurs.
• If your friend wants to understand identity design better, Logo Design Love by David Airey will be a great source of inspiration and helpful guide for her ($18.43 USD). 
• If she just need a good, heart-warming inspirational book with great takeaways or a spiritual side, check out any book from Brené Brown or Danielle Laporte.

Are you buying for a busy mom? Consider gifting some Amazon Audible credits so she can listen to the books while running errands. 

You can also support your friend’s creative and business journey by giving her a VISA gift card that she can use to finally purchase that e-course she was talking about for weeks.

These courses are pricey, so no one expect you to pay for the whole thing. But you can get together with other friends and raise money for an entry level class.

Amy Porterfield’s List Builders Lab ($397 USD) is a great starting point for online entrepreneurs. Your email list is your most treasured asset, and Amy helps you build it in the right way.

Sometimes the only thing you need on a boring, gray, winter day is some good-vibe music. A Spotify subscription will help your friend enjoy some pick-me-up ad-free and she can access millions of songs from indie to mainstream artist.

Price: $9.99 USD / month (with their current deal, the first 3 months cost only $0.99 USD / month).

Type lovers, listen! This can be a great office wall decor for you that you can change over and over again to your liking. It can even be used as a cool Instagram photo prop.

Price: $80 USD / bundle (I like the North Pole Combo with board, two type of colors for the letter and rulers for neat styling)

If your loved one is worried about the environment or wants to support fair-trade made products and developing communities, these gifts would fit her perfectly.

My favorite quarterly subscription is similar to Fab Fit Fun but with a very positive message: Everything included in your Causebox subscription box helps either to protect the environment or to support artisans and women in developing countries.

The products are beautiful and the packaging is top notch. The box also includes a magazine showcasing every contributing business and their philanthropic endeavors.

You can subscribe to just one season and cancel afterwards or subscribe for a whole year (yearly subscribers can pick their colors and styles for certain items).

Price for one box is $54.95 USD, for a whole year $199.80 USD ($49.95 USD / box)

​Does your loved one spends way too much time in front of computer? Is she getting “in the creative flow” and doesn’t stand up for hours, even to get a glass of water?

I’m in that boat and oftentimes I get a bad headache by the end of the day, especially if I don’t hydrate.

Well, this can be solved easily with a beautiful S’well water bottle. These are really well made and honestly, surprised me during our recent travel.

We went to a beach where we first had to walk through a shadeless lava flow from the parking lot on a quite hot day. When we finally got there we were all thirsty so we grabbed our water bottles. My usual bottle was sweaty outside and lukewarm inside. My hubby’s S’well still had ice cubes inside that we put in more than 3 hours prior our trip. Not to mention that it wasn’t wet on the outside so it was safe to carry together with our camera and phones.

S’well is also a proud partner of UNICEF USA, committing $800,000 since 2015 to help provide clean and safe water to the world’s most vulnerable communities.

If your fempreneur friend loves working from coffee shops, this gift will help her reduce paper cup and plastic lid waste in a very stylish way.

Coffee is best enjoyed from ceramic or glass cups due to its acidity. These cups from Joco Cups are made from glass and silicon, they are easy to wash with no small thingies that no dishwasher can handle… If you’ve ever cleaned a commercial coffee machine clogged with 5-day-old milk froth and coffee, you know what I’m talking about...

In addition, these glass cups were artisan blown, so you support real people not big machines.

Joco Cups works together with Take 3 For The Sea to remove harmful plastic from our environment.

If you like to promote some self-care with your gifts, this company is a great resource. This Brazilian brand is rated number 14 on the 2018 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World index according to Corporate Knights, the Magazine for Clean Capitalism. And they are number one in their category (personal products), by far overtaking L’Oreal (number 84 on the same list).

Natura Brasil is also the first publicly traded B-Corporation, which means that they work with integrity, transparency, sustainability in mind. They empower Brazilian families, they take part in education and help protect the Amazonas Region and it’s important biodiversity.

I recently tried their Murumuru Hair Mask, and I’ve never seen such a rich formula before. 

Patagonia is one of the first companies who decided against the questionable ethics of fast fashion and created ethically made, eco-conscious active wear for the outdoorsy type.

If your loved one struggles to find good quality and sustainably made clothes for her daily dog walk, jogging or yearly ski trip, you’ll make her very happy with a Patagonia product.

They are pricey though, although they also last very long.

These following picks can work for many taste and lifestyle:

• Patagonia All Weather Zip-Neck for $79 USD, perfect for mildly cool to cold weather (doggy mommies and joggers will love it).

• Everyday Wrap for $99 USD, with a girlier, “fits everything” style that makes you feel cozy in your home office.

• Patagonia Women’s Powder Bowl Jacket for $399 USD, the kind of “expensive but worth it” jacket that every skier or snowboarder would love. Also great for winter hikes and snowshoeing…

And while you are on their site, notice how well they made each sales page. Under every product you’ll get info about the special, recycled materials and the suppliers. Transparency is key to build an honest brand.

​Does your friend need design elements for her business? Fonts, photos, templates, textures, patterns, WordPress themes, Photoshop actions, illustrations (I could go on and on…), these can all be found on Creative Market for a very affordable price.

No matter what type of business your creative friend is building, she needs professional looking photos from the get go. The era of Shutterstock and mediocre stock photos is over, it’s time to check boutique stock photo subscriptions.

The great thing about these services is that they are consistent in style, which means that your brand will also look consistent.

I wrote an article about my favorite 15 free / affordable stock photo resources earlier. 

My current favorites that I’m subscribed to (and use them for my blog cover images and on Instagram) are:

• Social Squares for $25 USD / month
• Styled Stock Society for $75 USD / quarter (but I was lucky to grab a better deal on Cyber Monday, so you can wait ‘til next year to see better offers).

Design lovers can’t have enough fonts. This is a rule of thumb when you deal with us.

And by far the most superior font bundles are offered by DesignCuts. They’ve recently released the Font Guru’s Essential Library with 320 fonts (worth over $2000) for only $29 USD.

The fonts can be used both for personal and commercial projects.

Not everyone needs a DSLR, but if you plan to buy anything photography related, make sure that the camera you buy has good manual settings.

I have a simple Canon Powershot S110 point and shoot (check out its successor, the S120) but because it can take photos is RAW format and has a wide variety of manual settings for aperture and shutter speed, I realized I don’t really need more. 

If your loved one is more serious to start experimenting with photography, these are great starter DSLRs:

• Nikon D3400 with 18-55mm and 70-300mm lenses for $429 USD
• Nikon D5600 with 18-55mm and 70-300mm lenses for $696.95 USD
• Canon EOS T7i DSLR Camera with 18-55mm IS STM Lens + 2 x 32GB Card + Accessory Kit for $749 USD

I use Thrive Architect to build my website pages and my VA uses it to build blog posts. It’s simple drag and drop with a very intuitive and quick, not to mention their stellar customer service and support forum.  

Thrive Architect makes the website building task totally doable for anyone without coding knowledge. So if your friend wants to build her website, but she’s afraid of the tech stuff, Thrive Architect will be her life saver.

The best thing: you only have to pay for it once and then you get the updates forever.

I hope you found something in this list that will light up your loved one’s face on Christmas day (or any other special event).

Let me know which one of these was your favorite gift idea for creative entrepreneurs. Leave your feedback in the comment section below.