How to Make Your Own Gift Wrap and Other Wrapping Ideas

The Christmas holiday is fast approaching. After buying that perfect gift, you may choose to make your own gift wrap for a variety of reasons. You may want to give it a personal touch. For instance, I have a nephew whose birthday is on Christmas Eve. Yes, I did the unspeakable, as far as a child would see it, and decided to combine his birthday and Christmas gifts, I did, however, buy something much larger than I would have for just his birthday. What I'm getting at is that I made wrapping paper that said both Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas. You may choose to make your own gift wrap for a variety of reasons, whether it be for that personal touch, as a Holiday craft idea for you and the kids, as a rescue when you have run out of store bought wrapping paper or to just plain save money and recycle. Whatever the reason, you can do it very easily in a variety of ways.

The first thing you have to do is answer "paper" next time the store clerk asks you, "paper or plastic". You will need approximately 2 or 3 bags per average sized gift. Once you have your bags, take each of them and do the following…Open bag…Start at opening and cut on fold that separates store logo from side of bag. Cut all the way down the side of bag and 3 sides of bottom, and then back up the other side of bag coming up the fold on the other side of logo. When finished, you should have cut off a long rectangular shaped piece that includes the logo and bottom of bag. What is left is a wider rectangular piece with no store logo. Once you have done this to all of your bags, you can decorate. Before decorating, you may want to measure your gift to the paper to see how many pieces will be needed for that particular gift, then you will know how many pieces need to be decorated the same. My favorite way to decorate wrap for the Christmas holiday is rubber stamping. I pick 2 or 3 colors of ink and a couple of rubber stamps. It may be white snowflakes with green trees or silver stars with red "Merry Christmas". If you have your child(ren) helping you, let them feel free to work on their own. Work on the same pattern on different sheets of wrap. You can do the white snowmen, while they do the green pine trees, then switch. Keep your hands busy on your project, so they can work on their own. If it bothers you that their pattern is off balance, that's o.k., you can use their sheet on the backside of the gift. Just acknowledge their hard work.

If you don't happen to have rubber stamps and ink, you can decorate with paints. For grandma's birthday you may want the grandkids handprints on the paper or you could let them draw and color pictures on the paper. Stickers are another option you can use.

Another wrapping idea is to save some of the tissue paper you get in gift bags. A lot of people don't like to re-use them on another gift bag if they have gotten too crinkled up or creased. I say, take a good and wrinkled piece and use it to wrap smaller gifts. Don't use anything that has ripped and make sure you have used enough pieces or folded it enough that you will not be able to see through the tissue paper, and then use some nice ribbon and a bow. A last minute idea for wrap is to head to your newspaper recycle bin and pull out the funny papers. The comic section always works as great birthday wrap.

Some things to remember are to always let any ink or paint thoroughly dry before wrapping your gift, make sure anything you have a child do is age appropriate and when using more than one sheet of home made wrap made from thicker paper such as grocery bags, you may need to use packaging tape to attach the pieces together. Finally, watch for ribbon sales at your local craft or fabric store. I've found that seasonal solid or plaid ribbon looks best. Be creative, have fun and make your gift wrap unique!