Inexpensive ways to wrap gifts without gift wrap

Wrapping gifts with alternatives to the pricey gift wrap is inexpensive but it does not by any means have to come across as “cheap”! Instead you could be the artistic one who’s skill and craftiness everyone admires. There are many ways to gift wrap without actually buying the pricey stuff. A lot of times you can re- use the wrapping material (no not the wrinkled ripped up wrapping paper with tape still stuck to it!) you already have or create wrap from non conventional methods.

I love using pages from the magazines to wrap gifts. We all have random magazines and papers lying around the house that are most likely collecting dust. Leaf through them, chances are they have random cool looking pages, some are ads, some photo shoots, it doesn’t matter. Test try wrapping a book up in one of them, it comes out quite nice. Make sure the wrap is appropriate for a recipient, you don’t want to wrap your guys video game with something that has pretty butterflies on it, or that little girls hair set wrapped up with a cool biker dude on it.

Here are a few quick samples which I made for this article (apologies for the bad picture quality however):

- This One was actually filled with chocolates as a small Valentines day gift for my husband (yay for going cheap huh?)

- It was made with a square of scrap booking paper found amongst my other crafts stuff, piece of old rope, lip sticker from few Valentines ago, scrap heart bead and a random tag I found and painted.

- This is a page from a “photo shoot I believe, the golden part is pants and the rest might be a couch! Add some ribbon if you can find and voila!

- The “IT LIST, I like this one it always passed with my girl friends since early teens, especially if the gift is beauty or fashion oriented.

- Another very cute one.

All of these were made by just using magazine pages instead of gift wrap, and all I had was one magazine to work with too! News paper could look really cool as gift wrap but it is better to stick to magazines as their ink wont smudge and smear all over the place. Another great idea is getting printer paper (this works for bigger gifts too as you can tape the pieces together) and painting it yourself. Paper bags and plain manila rope do well for those who like the whole “green thing”. Wrap the gift up into the paper bag, use the string to tie it instead of the bow and stick an interesting looking branch or flower under it on the top.

There are a lot of cool shaped candy boxes out there, I have emptied and cleaned them before then painted and they come out amazing as gift boxes. If you are more crafty or if you know how to sew and have some fabric (be it store bought meant for crafts or a top that you don’t wear anymore) you can also sow gift wrap. This works especially good with bottled gifts, or smaller ones for which you can sow gift baggies.

However you decide to wrap your gift without using any gift wrap make sure that it compliments either the present or the recipient of it in some way and the economic crisis that everyone talks about will be the furthest thing from anyones mind when looking at your work of art!