“Good things come in small packages,” or so the old saying goes. I would venture to change it to “the best things come in homemade gift wrap.”
When you wrap a gift with creativity and ingenuity, you can save money while adding your own personal touch to the gift. I tapped my Twitter microblogging network to bring you ideas for creating your own wrapping. Combining their ideas with my own, here’s what we came up with:
- Tin Foil — Emboss flowers and words in your tin foil wrap with a ball point pen.
- Tissue Paper — You can stamp, draw on, fold, fluff and crinkle to make many fun wrappings with tissue paper, white or colored. With a little clever folding and tying in the middle, you can add colorful tissue flowers to the top.
- Brown Paper Bags — Same as tissue, just brown. Color, stamp, or draw on. Tie with raffia, straw, or twine for a fun organic look. Brown paper bags also look nice painted with stripes or dots.
- Pool/Tote Bag — Use part of the gift as the wrap itself.
- Basket — Group items and tie with a ribbon. This method works well with food gifts.
- Kitchen Towel — Wrap towel around kitchen tools and tie with ribbon or string. The revival of the flour towel provides the perfect weight for dual use as gift wrap.
- Receiving Blanket — Tie a thin blanket around baby items for a cozy baby gift.
- Garage Sale Wrapping Paper — Pick up fun papers at garage sales. People are always clearing out their old stock. Head to the stationery aisles of stores going out of business. Cards and gift wrap always seem to be plentiful on the sale racks.
- Cloth — Wrap present in pretty printed cloth and tie with ribbon. Even a new pillowcase might make a fun covering for a larger gift.
- Comics/Newspaper — And, then there is the old standby: newspaper or comics with a colorful bow.
Several ideas for decorating plain wrap materials may include stamping with a half potato cut into a shape dipped in paint, rubbing crayon over tissue with leaves underneath, adding freehand flowers in marker and sticking on stamps. To pad a gift, shred paper or use leftover tissue from a previous gift. Definitely save gift bags from previous gifts. On the same note, saving used wrapping paper works in some instances but there are so many options to give a fresh and fun gift without using creased wrapping that I don’t usually go that route.
Top your gift with a teaser or some small item that catches eye from the get-go. A silk flower, a small whisk, a baby rattle or a dollar rolled in a ribbon all tempt the eye and excite the soul.
Once you get in the habit of recycling and repurposing resources around your home, whatever the project, the creative juices start flowing and you never know what you might come up with. Try to outdo yourself each time with fun, new ideas.
One of the best gifts you can give is to share an idea from which others can be inspired, to show that you are willing to invest just a little more time and thought to give your own personal touch.
In the Phoenix, February 25, 2009
