The project made as a gift should fit the recipient more than your wish to impress them.

Making something for someone is generous and also, quietly, a performance. The ambition creeps in: the harder version, the impressive technique, the thing that makes them say they cannot believe you made it. What arrives is sometimes a beautiful object that does not fit their house, their taste, or their storage, and now they have to display it forever out of kindness.

Start from what they actually use and like, even if it is plainer than what you are capable of. Ask a question or two of someone who knows them. Keep the scale modest, since a gift they use weekly beats one they admire once and put away.