Creative and Personalized Gift Wrapping Ideas

Although I do purchase ready-made gift wrapping materials from time to time, most often I prefer to use rolls of solid paper, craft paper bags, and plain gift tags that I decorate while keeping in mind each person’s style. You may recall the hand-printed gift wrap I made last year or the easy button gift embellishments I created quite recently. Both were a hit with the recipients. Perhaps it’s the decorator in me, but how the package is wrapped is almost as important as the gift inside.

As many of you know, wrapping presents is one of my favorite things to do around the holidays. I’m so fortunate this year to have a wrapping room (a project/storage room that has been taken over by wrapping materials), and I don’t have to haul everything up to our dining table, wrap some presents, and then pack it all up again so we can eat. It’s made the whole experience even more enjoyable, and I highly recommend having a dedicated area in your house for these kinds of projects if you have the extra room.

Wrapping gifts doesn’t have to be expensive. This year I found so many items around the house, as well as free printables online. As a result I only had to purchase a few gift bags and a bit of ribbon.

Button Gift Tags

While I was preparing for projects earlier this fall, I came across containers full of buttons I thought would be perfect for creating something for Christmas. Recently, while my husband was in Europe for work (so jealous!) and my son was snowboarding (again, so jealous!), I took advantage of the free time and hand made a series of gift tags for specific people on my list.

To make the button gift tags, I used charcoal cardstock (12″ x 12″ piece of heavy scrapbook paper will make 6 large 4″ x 6″ tags), a variety of buttons and ribbon, hole punch, scissors, craft glue, pencil, and a white chalk pen. I also used monogram letter stencils that I created on the computer in the font Baskerville Old Face, size 270, in light grey so they would show up easily to trace on the dark paper.

To start with, I cut the 12″ x 12″ piece of cardstock into 6 tags, each measuring 4″ x 6″ and angled off the top two corners with scissors and punch a hole in the top. Once I had the basic tags, I began playing around with the buttons to create different shapes. For the monogram options, I traced the stencils onto the tag using a pencil and placed the buttons until I was happy with how they looked. A dab of glue on each button was all I needed to keep them secure.

I used the chalk pen to write who it was to on the back of the tag.

Free Printable Gift Tags

If you keep a collection of cardstock on hand, there’s no need to purchase gift tags. Last year I found the cutest free Christmas printables that I have saved in a folder on my computer, and this year I added a few more.

Kelli Murray

The Caroline Johansson

We also had some left over Christmas cards from last year so I cut the individual photos out from the collage and attached them to some of the gifts.

Back in October, I started a Pinterest board called Wrap it Up. It’s where I collect a bunch of fantastic gift-wrapping ideas for the holidays and all year round. If you’re still looking for some last minute gift wrapping ideas, here are some of my favorites: