Merry Christmas Wrapping!

When someone says they have their gifts purchased and wrapped by September, I generally want to punch her in the face. Now, I love gift giving - the shopping, the wrapping, everything! - but I like to do it in the weeks just before Christmas, mostly on account of my procrastination and such. Even if I did get my act together early, I would not like it nearly as much if stores were not full of decorations, carols, and other people busily trying to get their gifts too. It's the excitement, the hubbub of Christmas coming, that makes it fun! Often, buying gifts late can mean they will likely be thrown in a gift bag with a sticker tag on the outside. While there is nothing wrong with this, I love the look of a beautifully wrapped gift. When I hosted our last craft night, we set out to find beautiful ways to wrap gifts that are fun to do, creative and mostly (because of those self-imposed time constraints) easy peasy. With a look in my craft box, an inexpensive trip to the craft store and a short walk around the neighborhood gathering leaves, pinecones and sticks and I was ready to do all of this!

I will go into more detail below about these individually, but I want to point out that most of what made these gifts beautiful was free and falling from trees. I even used magnolia leaves as gift tags. The leaves or sticks or pinecones would be beautiful spray painted too!

For the gift on the left (picture below), I used scraps of craft paper and twine. The middle gift was wrapped with yarn and the tags I made (I love these!) by watercoloring heavy paper and cutting them out with a gift tag hole punch (get one! you will use it all the time). The gift on the bottom was decorated by stringing buttons on a thin piece of twine or thread. So cute and so easy to do!

Tassels might be my new favorite thing to make. I used this easy tutorial but did them on my hand rather than the cardboard because I could not be bothered to find and cut a piece of cardboard…that's how I roll, ladies. I used a gold Sharpie to draw on the bag. Done. For the other gift, I used the same gold Sharpie to make a long squiggly line and colored markers to draw Christmas lights all over them. This is a cute idea for kids to do, using their finger prints as the lights.

Christmas wrapping gifts bags gift bags paper

For this beauty, I used a stencil and watercolored that lovely dear and tied a eucalyptus twig on with ribbon and embroidery floss. The small gift on the bottom is adorned with a cute handmade bow. Now about that bow...

Christmas Wrapping Stencils and Eucalyptus

I love making these bows! I've made these for the past couple of years and I love them! They can be made with anything, but magazines, newspapers and kids drawings are my favorite materials. My friends especially loved making these. I believe the phrase "total game changer" was used. We're not joking around here.

The trickiest part about these is figuring out how to fold the bow over. You will have to try it a couple of times to get the feel of it, but this is the motion.

Yvonne is making gift tags by stamping book pages with the tag stamp and then cutting craft paper around them for some fun color and pattern.

Danny was a tassel making fool. She admitted she was more likely to throw stuff in a bag than wrap gifts so she focused on stamping and stenciling bags….and making those tassels!

Danny Vincent makes tassels and gift bags

Here we are with what we were most proud of: Marisa with her bows, Yvonne with her tags, Danny with her tassels and bags and me with my paper. Fun!

Marisa Graziano, Yvonne Dodd, Danny Vincent and Gina Rice Sims

I promise these projects were fun and EASY. Put on a Christmas movie and you'll be done by the time the credits roll. Merry Christmas Wrapping!

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