improvised & recycled gift wrap

why buy gift wrap? recycle what you have for free! what do you use instead?

at yuletide i use plain brown paper bags, tied with twine, raffia, or red ribbon, decorated with gold glitter, pine cones, mini grapevine wreathes, little baskets... the effect is rustic & natural. these look very pretty & my relatives recognize my "signature style" of wrapping when they open their gifts.

for shakti's birthday i'm giving my son some bags, some potato stampers, and some tempra paint and letting him go to town.

last year for my toddler's birthday i used the comics section of the newspaper, tied with bold, glossy black ribbon & multi-colored bows. this year i've discovered how cool weather maps look as gift wrap, either the colorful maps in the local paper or USA today with white, black or blue ribbon, or the greyscale maps from the times, tied with very thin black satin ribbon in a simple bow knot. i'll have to remember this for my son's birthday in october. he's facinated with weather & is just learning to read weather maps!

i've heard road maps make good giftwrap, too. i've also made reusable fabric bags.

 

good ideas~

Also tin foil is a very shinny wrap!!

or how about those "wrap sacks" they are fabric and you wrap it up and then the next person uses it for a gift,, and on and on this sack travels!

 

Whenever I have a gift that is in a box, instead of wrapping it, I paint the box with something cool. One year I painted the Dark Side of the Moon cover and it came out really good (not that it is that hard to mess up) and my friend ended up hanging it up on the wall afterward. Its alot of fun.

 

I love the look of a gift wrapped in a brown paper bag--much moreso than if it were wrapped in new giftwrap. Interview magazine has a great texture to the paper, big pages, and colorful, interesting ads/artwork, making it perfect to use as giftwrap.