Craft Ideas for Gift Wrap - Paper, Bags and Bows

An ordinary household sponge can be cut to a shape, dipped in acrylic paint, and very quickly dabbed onto plain paper. Use fast-drying acrylic craft paint. Use any color of acrylic paint and more than one color can be used.

In this example, the result is some loosely painted designs that resemble Christmas trees with the plan in mind to just get a bright, shiny overall color on the paper. This can be done in any color on computer paper for a small gift or it can be done on butcher paper for large packages. It's a very easy and fast way to produce some interesting wrapping paper.

See the video below for decorating paper for gift wrap.

It's easy to learn how to sew fabric bags for wrapping gifts. After the gift has been opened, the bags can be reused for wrapping gifts or they can kept for travel bags or for storing special items, becoming gifts in themselves.

Sewing your own gift bags can be very economical. Some people have written that they recycle sheets and clothing by sewing gift bags and saving the money otherwise used for purchasing gift wrap.

When making more of my bags, I use the same instructions for any size.I need. The fabric is twice as long as the length of the finished bag plus nine and one half inches. The width is the desired width of the finished bag plus two and one half inches, cutting two of these pieces for each bag.

For wrapping gifts in a bag, you will need tissue paper. Lay the gift in the center of the tissue paper. You may have to lay out several sheets of tissue, overlapping them, if your gift is large. Bring up the corners and lightly scrunch them together. If the gift bag you are using is open at the top rather than using a bag that ties, allow some of the tissue paper to show in the opening of the bag.
________________________________________________________________________

The bag is 6 inches by 6 inches plus the top edging.

I laid two pieces of fabric, 8-1 /2 inches by 21-1 /2 inches, right sides together and stitched a 3 /4 inch seam all around the edges, leaving an opening to turn. I trimmed the seam to 1/ 4 inch, turned it inside out and then sewed the opening closed.

I measured down from the 7 inch edge 3-1 /4 inches and also 4 inches and placed small pencil marks at each of those two measurements on the outside edge of the piece and repeated this on the other side of this end of the piece. These measurements were repeated on the other end of the piece.

Then the piece was folded in half and a 1/ 2 inch seam was sewn from the bottom folded edge up to the
4 inch mark on both sides. Another 1/ 2 inch seam was sewn from the top down to the 3-1 /4 inch mark
on both sides.

The top was turned down to the outside (so the edge would be on the inside of the bag when finished) to
a third of an inch below the 4 inch mark and this was hemmed by hand securely.

Turned right side out, a 20-inch length of ribbon was inserted in a slot on the side and continued through the next slot, bringing it back to where it started. The ends of the ribbon were tied together and another length of ribbon was inserted on the other side of the bag the same way. These ends were tied together.

A Lundy