If you’ve found the perfect holiday gift for someone, you’re halfway there. Sure, maybe sixty percent but let’s be honest – we all want our gift recipients to get excited about the wrapping paper first. That’s what sets the whole tone. While there are plenty of great options of ready-made wrapping paper to buy out there, the personal touch often allows you to reuse old wrapping paper or other things you might have lying around to actually upscale the whole wrapping experience. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Make the Wrapping Paper its Own Gift
We’ve covered numerous fun ways to reuse existing gift wrap before, but turning your wrapping job into a piece of art kind of just blew us away. Check out this tutorial for turning your stacked, wrapped packages into something you might otherwise only find inside of a snow globe. This cute little scene with a bench and a tree is just the start of what you can do to theme your wrapping paper for that special person.
Snowman Gift Boxes
It’s as simple – and almost as inexpensive! – as creating an actual snowman. You just need some white paper, buttons, ribbons and some craft paper (the most you’ll spend is on the corncob pope) and you’ve got an amazing stack of presents that turn into an indoor, melt-free snowman. This tutorial from Smart School House will tell you everything you need and how to put it together to really liven up that space beneath the tree.
Photo Gift Tags
Whether you’re going with some old Polaroids, or some new ones, or even one of those small digital printers, what a fun way to personalize gifts without putting the person’s name on it. Use a good-sized photo of them (or the two of you) and slap that on the wrapping paper to make it immediately clear who gets what. The website Inspired by Charm has a great tutorial on making this look great, and is filled with other fun wrapping ideas.
Tiny Wreaths
The geniuses at Damask Love have this simple tutorial handy for making tiny ivy garland that you can buy on Amazon into small wreaths that frame a cute message on your wrapping paper. This is a great way to add some dimension to the whole thing, while also keeping it as festive as ever.
Make Your Own Stamps
Making your own wrapping paper is not easy, even if there are services who can print just about anything you want on to any kind of paper these days. Fortunately, there’s a reasonably inexpensive way to go about making your wrapping paper – with homemade stamps! Handmade Charlotte has created a great tutorial to make your own stamps and decorate your gift wrap. They’ve made different sized trees, but the fun part is that you can make just about anything into a foam stamp, and their suggestion to use a lint roller to make a never-ending stamp is absolutely brilliant. Add some paint and you’re good to go!