Stylish Yet Frugal Gift Wrapping Ideas

Posted on 24. Nov, 2009 by Dragon Sue in General Articles, Saving Money & Finances

Christmas is coming up fast and I know many are readying themselves to spend more money than they can already afford, so gift wrap is the last thing you want to waste money on! Here are some great tips from Sue for saving on your gift wrap expenses this year.

As I wandered round the shops looking for some wrapping paper that would impress the ‘posh-er’ members of my family, my heart sank. Everything I liked was well out of reach of the budget I had for wrapping, and there was nowhere else I could cut corners to pay the extra. My hopes dashed I had to rethink things drastically, and then I saw it as I walked out the shop disheartened. A gift wrapping kit that was priced at an extortionate price of £15, which could wrap, maybe, if you were lucky, one item! It consisted of brown parcel paper, raffia string, and a gift tag!

A quick trip to my local pound shop provided me with two rolls brown parcel paper, enough to do at least six presents per roll, and a rummage through my yarn cupboard produced enough scarlet wool to twist in to cord to tie the parcels with! Some thin brown card saved from some boxes I have received through the year and a dab of acrylic paint with glitter finished the whole image off with gift tags to match, and I have some wonderful, elegant, stylishly wrapped presents for all of £2! Where as the shops had me thinking I was going to have to spend more on the wrapping than I had on the presents themselves! Who in their right mind would pay £15 for not even a whole sheet of brown paper? What is the world coming to? Have we all gone mad?

Anyway…

Some other frugal ideas for gift wrapping are; comic strip pages from newspapers, tissue paper, scraps of pretty material, or even cellophane saved from bunches of flowers, wrapped artistically of course.

For frugal gift tags try sticky address labels, with a potato stamp design that you can write over, or old Christmas cards cut out, or a plain piece of white card with a small bow glued on.

If you like decorating your parcels, try making your own, bows with tinsel, ribbon or string, little pompoms, or wool/yarn flowers, or go the potato stamp route again, repeating the design you made for your gift tags.

The world is your oyster, if you just let yourself be open to your imagination, and your wrapping will be as talked about as the gifts inside!

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3 Responses to “Stylish Yet Frugal Gift Wrapping Ideas”

Deputyheadmistress

29. Nov, 2009

When somebody gives one of us a mylar balloon (often with a birthday present, or for a hospital stay), I always save them. The mylar’s shiny metallic colour is very festive, and these can be cut apart and used to wrap smaller items. Very pretty.

I have also used a brown paper bag decorated with fabric paints (picked up at a yard sale), and we used this bag for birthday gifts within our family for at least ten years. Oh, and we’ve made wrapping paper by stamping images with a potato stamp cut with a Christmas cookie cutter onto brown paper bags cut open, wrapping paper from a move, and sheets of blank newsprint from a yard sale.

We have also made our own bows using pages from magazines, from other old wrapping paper, from catalogs, and even newspaper (this looked strangely cool). If you scroll down here you can see a photograph of some of them.
Deputyheadmistress´s last blog ..Sunday Hymn Post

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Forest

29. Nov, 2009

That’s a great use for those balloons, most of them end up lonely floating through the sky until they come down in some unsuspecting place.

Do you mean one paper bag lasted 10 years? That is quite a feat and just shows the true possibilities of reuse!

Thanks for the link, just checking it out now.

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Deputyheadmistress

29. Nov, 2009

Yes, that one paper bag lasted at least ten years (maybe more), but it’s even better than that. We have seven children (some bio, some adopted), we used it for every family birthday every single year, so that’s 9 times a year that bag got trotted out to hold presents, for at least ten years.

I used a hole punch and punched holes around the top and threaded that with a ribbon (also purchased at a thrift shop), so we did not ever tape the bag, we just tied that same bit of ribbon shut.

But the time we quit using it (mice got to it, if I remember right, and that was why it had to go), it was looking a bit tatty and worn, but by then it had become a Tradition, and children adore traditions (even when they are grown), and they would have been quite indignant had we foisted off some shiny new impersonal packaging on them.

It helps, too, I think, that our family doesn’t throw big expensive birthday bashes. Birthday parties are quiet at home affairs, with home-made cake and often home-made gifts, or second hand store presents.

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