10 Frugal Tips for Gift Wrapping

For the frugal holiday lovers, I have some gift wrapping tips for you! If you’re tired of spending a ton of money and feeling like the gift wrapping process is tedious, you’ll be happy to know that just a tad bit of imagination and a touch of love can create some attractively wrapped gifts. So, gather up the swaths of cloth, paper bags, and crafting supplies and get ready to have some fun with wrapping this holiday season. Have a wrapping party with your friends or let your kids invite some buddies over to join in the festivities.

1. Leftover pieces of fabric can make softly textured gift wrappers. Use the fabric that is lying around your house to add some creative holiday designs with puffy fabric paint for a three-dimensional, rich quality appeal.
2. Jazz up gifts with some paper bags and craft paper. There are a million ways to decorate presents when wrapped this way! Wrap, decorate…how the gifts come out is completely up to you and whoever is wrapping presents with you. Have your children dip their hands in washable paint and decorate the plain paper with handprints – wouldn’t their grandparents love their personalized paper? *Clever hints: You can recycle your brown paper bags and fasten them shut with double sided sticky tape. Blend the extra seams of the paper bag into the decorative pattern.
3. Instead of a box, use an ice cream container. Decorate the box with odds and ends around the house; you can use some ribbon, flowers, and if it’s for the kids, some colorful, fluffy pom poms are cute.
4. When you run out of wrapping paper in the middle of a present, create a mosaic by adorning the seams with ribbons, beads fabrics or colored duct tape.
5. Use the Bowdabra to make economical and unique bows. To be even more frugal, you can repurpose the scraps of ribbons that you find around your house to design a very distinctive bow.
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7. Use the Christmas cards from last year to create personalized gift tags. Decorate them with scraps of ribbon or fabric, candy, buttons, or glitter.
8. For larger presents, place them into a pillow case and tie them off with a gorgeous bow. For an even larger gift, run to one of the many dollar stores and purchase an inexpensive vinyl tablecloth or fabric remnant.
9. Let your children design some art work. When you wrap presents in children’s artwork, the artwork poses as a wonderful present, too. Artwork is great giftwrap for both grandparents and teachers.
10. Shop at the end of the season. Once Christmas is over, wrapping paper is marked down to prices with amazing savings. Be sure to hit the after Christmas sales and store the paper in a cool, dry spot for the next year.
11. Instead of using scotch tape, try using dots of glue or colorful duct tape.

A bit of imagination, ingenuity and some “crafting time” thrown together can save money and create some fabulous looking gifts. Be sure to look around you house for materials that you could use to wrap and decorate with. The sky is the limit when you “think outside of the box”.

About the Author

Sandy Sandler is founder of non-profit Crafters 4 Kids and creator of the QVC best-seller, the Bowdabra. Her frugal craft projects and activity ideas are designed to transform the creatively-challenged into creative pros. Sandy’s focus is on creative and easy projects that parents can do with their kids and that kids can even do on their own that are both frugal and green in nature. Crafters 4 Kids focuses on projects that can be done under 5 minutes and under $5. Visit www.C4K555.org. Contact Sandy at jaimevivre@mac.com