Gift Wrap Ideas

Tia, this is all for you! . . . I was asked to put a little class together for Enrichment night last week about creative gift wrapping and christmas tags. It turned into a raid of the dollar store. The ladies seemed to like what I displayed and asked me if I could bring it all to church on Sunday so people could look it over again. So I did - long story short, the box that all these little items were brought in disappeared after church and so I was trying to get my 3 kids, an infant seat, 3 heavy bags, and all this junk out to my car (with no husband to help may I remind you). I ended up just throwing all of these little gifts into the back of my car out of frustration - so they are not in great condition today as I set them out to be photographed. In a nutshell, here is what you see in the photos:

You can never go wrong with LOTS of cellophane and LOTS of ribbon. Costco is the best place to buy ribbon.

The big butterfly is just an ornament, choose a cheap one at the dollar store that fits the person you are gifting to.

The "To" "From" photo tag turned out cute I though - just find a simple shots of you and those people you are giving to.

I love the cereal box. Unseal the bottom of the box and slip something special inside like money, movie tickets, gift cards, or school pictures. It's a fun reason to buy that $5 box of cereal that we could never justify spending full price on!

If you are looking to do something neat just with wrapping paper, try adding some pleats and you are folding and taping (this looks better on solid paper).

The monograpm idea is great too. I just cut my letter out of paper but you could do wooden letters or chip board.

And why not embellish a nice envelope if you are just giving gift certificates this year? I tied a handful of the crinkly basket filler with a couple of other ribbons and attached it where I had added a colorful paper band around the envelope.

I also folded an envelope out of a full-page magazine advertisement - that's the one with the ladies legs and wild red hair that you see.

One of my favorite ideas was to wrap your small gift in cheese cloth and then gather it at the top. It makes a little rosette and its really pretty - just make sure and wrap your gift underneath with a colorful paper.

On that one I added shrinky dink tag - you can have your kids make those!

I found some cute little gift bags that I kept folded down and used it as a tag on a larger package.

Wine bags are perfect for all kids of gifts. They are re-usable too if made out of fabric!

There is a glittery blue tree wrapped in cellophane in the pic - why not stash something small inside the cone of the tree and wrap it up? The tag is a stack of christmas post it notes that I wrote on the front and tied on with ribbon.

There is a red velvet box in the picture that I added a glass knob to on the top - yes, I did find the box at the dollar store. I was amazed at the plethora of things available there. All it takes is a little "thinking out of the box!"

I found some more cute ideas on "The Goodie Box" (check out their blog). Here they are:

• Wrap your presents with newspaper and tie a red or green ribbon around it.( I thought it would be cute too if you added a Christmasy paper band around the middle box and then put your ribbon on.)

• Cut a snowflake out of white paper like you used to do as a kid and attach it to the front of your gift.

• Take a picture of different Christmas decorations around your house, print them and make them into gift tags by writing with a permanent maker right on top (similar to the picture of who the present is for idea…).

Make your own gift bag out of an envelope by sealing an empty envlope and cutting off one end. This works great with any size of envelope. (Someone once showed me how to actually fold the envelope so it looks exactly like a gift bag…it was so neat!)

HOPE THIS HELPS, TIA!!!! Good Luck and Happy Wrapping.