10 years of Christmas wrapping ideas to help inspire you to create your own masterpiece gifts. Brown paper packages tied up with string? That’s so 1965. At least add a pine sprig or blast of sparkle. Or an entire snowy scene.
Yeah, I go overboard. What of it? Need I remind you that you’re here too, so chances are you’re a bit of an overboarder yourself. WE are the overboarders. The collection of makers not satisfied with mediocre. We change things, fix them, glitter them and hole punch them. We have at least 3 different types of scissors and entire drawers dedicated to our favourite glues.
That is why you and I are here. And the next time someone says to us “Gee, I wish I had that kind of spare time.” we will say to THEM, “I WISH YOU DID TOO, BECAUSE JUST REMOVING THE PRICE TAG FROM A GIFT DOESN’T CONSTITUTE WRAPPING.”
Also, let us know if you’d like one of us to bedazzle your remote to make your 8 hours of Netflix streaming every night more special.
This look at the past 10 years of my Christmas wrapping should give almost everyone some sort of inspiration whether you’re looking to go BIG or small with your craftiness.
10 Years of Wrapping Ideas.
Holiday Scene Gift Toppers
In 2014 I said good-bye to bows and topped my gifts with little holiday scenes. Use kraft paper, spray snow and little toys from the dollar store to create these beautiful gift toppers. Plus they're FUN to make.
Pinecone Bows.
Wrap with recycled materials. Feed bags, pinecones (nature's poop), twine and natural sprigs were how I went in 2011. This post will show you how to make the pinecone bows.
DIY Sparkle Wrapping Paper.
Use a light box, glass table or any other transparent surface like a glass door to trace ANY image you want onto paper and then glitter the hell out of it.
Traditional Town & Country Inspired.
Wrapping doesn't have to be reinvented all the time. My personal favourite wrapping is this from last year. Plain plaid paper, and gold paper with satin ribbon and velvet ribbon. It's classic, simple wrapping.
BACK IN BLACK.
This 2016 wrapping has one of my favourite ideas. Using vintage photos of who you're giving the present to as the tag. I put them in tiny gold frames which I got for cheap at a Party Store in their wedding section. But you can put them in any little frames you want if fancy gold isn't your thing. Also, I have a good bow idea in this post too.
More Holiday Scene Gift Toppers.
These gift scenes are a little more subdued than the earlier ones with toy cars and green trees ready to be delivered. They depict simple white forest scenes with evidence of skiing and skating. If you're crafty and creative you'll come up with some brilliant ideas of your own! If you aren't crafty and creative my scenes are easy for you to copy.
Traditional Christmas Wrapping. Simple, Classic, Plaid.
The easiest way to make your wrapping special is to just find some beautiful ribbon. This is silk, wired plaid ribbon with an abundance of soft gold fringe. I also include a fun tag idea in this post. If you're really stuck for a wrapping idea this year I urge you to just head to your nearest craft store like Michaels and find yourself a beautiful ribbon.
Wrapping Paper Bows.
This takes more time than buying a bow but you can make your own custom bows from the wrapping paper you're using by following this tutorial.
GIFT WRAPPING TIPS
- Invest in one of these WEIGHTED tape dispensers. This one is beautiful and heavy.
- If you don’t have a weighted dispenser, pull off enough small pieces of clear tape for the entire present and just stick them to the edge of whatever surface you’re working on. That way they’re right there to grab.
- To make packages look more finished, always fold under any raw edges.
- If you’re planet conscious, choose wrapping paper that doesn’t have glitter, foil or cellophane on it. Plain papers, even coloured, can be recycled in most cases. (with bows and tape removed)
- Tape not holding your ribbon? Use a stapler.
- Save the boxes your online items are shipped in. They’re perfect (obviously) for wrapping.
- If you don’t have online shopping boxes and you need a box check your cupboards for cracker or cereal boxes. They make great wrapping boxes.
- If the gift is looking bland, go outside and start trimming. Tuck a sprig of cedar, pine, or spruce into your bow or tie it on the gift alone with ribbon or string.
FYI I still don’t know how I’m wrapping my gifts this year so hold me in your thoughts and kneel at the altar of Martha Stewart for me.
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Thank you Karen…. this brought back some old memories of Christmases long gone. My gramma used to save used wrapping paper from year to year so it was entirely possible to get birthday paper at Christmas and vice versa plus the gift tag was the back of the receipt and no bow (apparently a waste of hard earned money). One year my mom weirdly gave me a weighted tape dispenser but not a glam one like yours. And every year on wrapping day, I send up a quiet “thanks Mum” 😇
I have a regular weighted tape dispenser but I threw out one part of it by accident so now it’s useless. :/ Your mom was a smart one! And with regards to your gramma, my mother still writes all birthday and Christmas cards in very, VERY light pencil so they can be used again, lol. ~ karen!
Oh gawd that’s hilarious! 😂 I like to think it’s a generational living-through-hard times thing but then I’ll do something similar and realize nah! I just have cheap blood in my veins.
Hi Karen,
I have been volunteered to do a “bow-making” table at my office Christmas party, and I’m starting to sweat… For some reason, the “Continue Reading” buttons are not working for me in either Chrome or Safari, but I desperately want to know how you made the “poofy center” in the gold-fringed plaid bows (instead of a knot). They’re magnificent.
Please help! Thanks!
Kristin
HI Kristin. That’s weird. Very weird. The even worse news is I don’t show you how to exactly make the boy in that post! It’s done with a pipe cleaner and the ribbon is twisted. I was worried about you and your bow making table though, lol. So I found this tutorial that does a similar bow. https://www.save-on-crafts.com/ideas/howtomakloop/ All you have to do is stop after the first two loops they do and add the tail. :) ~ karen!
Lol. I thought poop was nature’s poop?
All of these are so creative and some are absolutely beautiful! Thanks for all the ideas!
My favorites are the scenes with the little cars and also the snow scenes. So creative! Great ideas.
My son and his friends had a contest on wrapping one year. Someone got a plastic cling wrapped gift, using pretty much the whole roll, and son used duct tape…alot of duct tape- which does come in a variety of colors. Just for those slightly demented wrappers…
Karen – I love you and all of your readers.
The end.
I love you too TucsonPatty. I think I speak for all of the readers too, lol. ~ karen!
LOVE all these, all together. However. (you knew that was coming, eh?) The big graphic at the bottom of the post (with the truck, your logo & says Gift Wrapping Ideas) has a little red Pinterest rectangle on the top left of the photo which usually allows me to save that particular photo to my ever-growing Pinterest boards. But when I click that little Pinterest button, nothing happens. If I use my Pin It button on Chrome, it brings up a lot of photos from this particular page, but that photo isn’t one of them. I really want to save the photo with TAODS logo on it, but how do I do that? Is anyone else having that problem or is it just me.
That’s weird! I just tried it myself and it worked. The right photo popped up. I’m not sure what’s going on for you. :/ Maybe it was just some sort of a glitch at the time. Perhaps it’ll work now for you? ~ karen!
Is it just me or were there only 9 gift wrapping ideas not 10? Maybe I can count or click properly. The last gift I saw had the wrapping paper bow.
Oh and Merry Christmas Karen!
Anne
Thanks, Anne, thought it was just me having a senior moment. They’re even numbered 1 to 9 in the top left of each photo. Phew, they don’t have to put me in the Home for the Bewildered just yet……..
If I was in the neighbourhood I’d visit you in the home if it came to that! But only if they allowed me a day pass from mine.
Have a merry Christmas where ever you call home! 🎄
Okay; I get it. They are all wonderful. How, though, do you manage to do a gift beautifully for someone 3 thousand miles away and/or in another country. My BF lives in N.B. My favourite niece and nephew — the only ones who still get gifts at Christmas — lives in Pennsylvania. I use traditional, rather boring paper. Oh, wait, the white with the gold glitter, or red glitter or…. Thanks, Karen. Nary another boring gift shall I send. (See even as I was asking the question, I got the answer.)
My favorite of all time was the snow covered box with foot prints around the fir trees. I copied you and even left a little yellow snow next to a really tall fir tree. My brother still talks about it. Everyone loved the packages and didn’t want to open them. Run Karen, Run! Decide quickly so I can get my supplies. HO HO HO OL!
LOL. Today I was thinking I might just buy dollar store wrapping paper and call it a day. A little pee spot in the snow is a GREAT idea! ~ karen
Your photo styling and present wrapping skills are awesome. As are you.
Plus your joie de vivre is contagious. Thanks
Not enjoying this new style of your blog where I have to click through on every topic. Click baiting your readers so you can track your clicks….yeah that’s bloggers’ poop.
Hi Ella! That’s not exactly what click baiting is. In fact that isn’t what click baiting is at all. This is called a “round up”. Which is a post that includes links to the best of a certain topic on a site or on several sites. You can either look at the post and get a bit of information on all the wrapping ideas, or you can click through to the one you like the most to learn more about it. Or of course you can also just not read it at all. ~ karen!
Uh, NO, most Canadians would not call pine cones “nature’s poop”. They are Nature’s treasures for forests, squirrels, birds and other creatures of the land.
Yah but it’s a heckuva lot funnier.
Thank you for the great ideas.
Also, I think you misspelt ‘alter’ at the end.
Oop! I’ll go have a look and fix it. ~ karen!
Nope, Karen is correct. AltAr is a noun, where you pray and/or offer sacrifices. AltEr is a verb and means to change or modify something (& can also be used as an adjective!) . One of those crazy words in our ever challenging English language! Happy Thanksgiving.
I wasn’t right, lol. I fixed it. I typed before I thought. I hate it when I make mistakes like that. When I know better but still type the wrong thing. ~ karen!
That was a hilarious trip down blog memory lane. You are so funny. OVERBOARDERS UNITE!
I also feel like when people say “I wish I had that kind of spare time” they never want the answer of “I wish I had spare time, too, ’cause I got 5 hours of sleep last night and now feel a bit pukey.”
Ideas…wood burning? Gift ornaments as bows? MORE GLITTER is always a good answer. What if you went with BLACK glitter? Black glitter on black matte could be cool… or white (or bright color) paint on black matte (e.g. chalkboard.) Maybe edible (e.g. cookies) name tags, twine, and tea towels? Tea towels with people’s names silkscreened onto them?
I once papier-mâché-d tons of little colorful pieces of paper to a box for a gift for my best friend. We did have to cut it open with a knife…but it was gorgeous. I also once wove several different colors of curling ribbon over an entire small box, which was super lovely but was also super time-consuming. So maybe you don’t want that.
I cop out on this part of the pledge, currently. I can’t wait til I run out of the “regular” paper I bought on sale that time… because I too love wrapping things.
It might be fun to wrap all the presents so they had to be cut open with a knife.😂~ karen!
Creative and attractive!
Somehow I think you put more time into this site than you let on…. It shows!
My DIL makes fabric bags…by now she has a huge selection (all nicely folded and put away for next year) and all sorts of cute ties she’s made for them. Here I am, retired and no kids but do I make fancy bags? No sir! I don’t!
Years ago, several members of my family made fabric bags. They got passed around through the family and it was fun to remember who had originally made them.
I, too, make fabric gift bags. They are reusable, more environmentally friendly, and best of all, save time. It used to be that my husband and I both stayed up till wee hours in the morning (and I do mean wee hours, like 3 or 4) gift wrapping on Christmas Eve, then I’d be up after a couple hours of shuteye in order to get the 30-odd-pound turkey ready for dinner. Now, just match a gift with the right-sized bag and, voila! Life is so much sweeter.
Remember that post where you spray painted chicken feathers to use on packages? They were beautiful. I’m going to do that. In my Christmas dreams anyway . Most likely our packages will just have crap wrapping paper from walmart. It’s nice to have goals to fall short of.
I do remember that! I almost included it in this post but then decided against it. I literally just covered up a portion of the feather with cardboard or something and then spray painted the tip of the feather with gold. They turned out really well. ~ karen!
I wish you had 10 more years of ideas because I loooooved looking at these so much I didn’t want to stop. I had to go through these several times just for the pleasure of it. — and pine cones are nature’s poop? Do all Canadians say this or did that just, idk, pop into your head one day while you were refinishing something in a not-quite-ventilated-enough room? I scared my cats with my laugh at that. hahahahaha.
I’m not positive, but no, I don’t think other Canadians call pinecones that, lol. ~ karen!
If you live in the rainforest in British Columbia nature’s poop is fir cones. When you are in polite society.
They do make great fire starters however.