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Monday, December 18

Fun & Festive Wrapping Tips (on a budget!)

I love wrapping Christmas gifts, and I love to make the outside just as exciting as what's inside! And I do it without investing a lot of time, or a lot of money. Here are a few of my favorite tips for fun and festive wrapping on a budget! (check out the rest of our Christmas projects and posts here)


The Paper
Choose a color family and stick to it. I always go for brown and red papers, so I know whatever I buy year after year will work with the papers and ribbons I already have.


Get brown paper at Dollar Tree. Seriously. They have good size rolls of brown paper with the packing supplies for just $1! You know what they say about brown paper packages tied up with string, right? It's a simple and timeless favorite.


A few years ago, I did all our wrapping with a mix of this brown paper and newspaper. I literally spent $1 on wrapping paper that year.



These days I mix my beloved solid brown with my other red & brown papers. They are a cute combo, and it still saves a little money over buying all patterned paper (especially when I use the plain brown for larger gifts). 


Buy paper on sale when you can! After Christmas is a great time to go ahead and get paper for next year. Lately I've been buying my favorite papers at Ikea before Christmas because they always sell out, but I'm usually able to find solid red after Christmas if I need it. And did I mention Dollar Tree? You can't beat that anywhere.


Ribbons and Strings
I sometimes buy rolls of ribbon after Christmas, too. I stick to red, white, and green to match my paper, and look for the nicer fabric ribbon vs. the thinner papery ribbons. I actually haven't bought any the last two years because I'm still coasting on a multi-pack I bought a couple years ago!

The roll of gray twine is for birthday gifts - I use it with brown paper or a colorful striped paper I also found after Christmas. :)

I've also discovered this red and white twine from Ikea that is cheaper, and goes much farther than ribbon because there is so much on the roll! I'm still using up some leftover ribbons, but it's mostly been twine this year (and I still have two whole rolls left - I had no idea how much was in there when I bought them). It's amazing how a little bit of string can make a package feel all dressed up!


Gift Tags
The last few years I used these free printable gift tags. Just cut them out and tie them on! Plus there are tons more on pinterest. It does take a while, though, to do all the cutting and tying (and half the point of this post is that wrapping can be fast and easy). So I was excited to find a much quicker option that was still cute and affordable this year!


I went a new direction for gift tags with these sticker labels from Ikea (called Givande and sold in the paper goods section). They're made for labeling boxes and such, but they are also working just perfectly for our gifts. They were just $2 for 90 labels, and they are so easy to just stick on and go. The simple design gives the gifts another style boost, plus it goes with everything! And it's so much faster than cutting and tying tags.


Gift Toppers
If your budget is tight, you definitely don't need any kind of topper at all. Or you can make cheap salt dough tags (we did this with they boys a couple years ago and it was so fun!). But I'll tell you what, the last couple years I haven't done any kind of topper at all, and my presents weren't any the worse for wear. :)


However, if you want to snazz things up a bit, I found a great deal on these small ornaments to use as toppers for just a few gifts this year! At Cracker Barrel, of all places! They had a whole rack of small wooden & metal ornaments for $0.99, plus they were buy four get one free. So for $8, I got ten cute little gift toppers. I'm wondering if they'll be on sale even more after Christmas and I can grab a few for next year? Again, I stuck to my theme colors with red, white, and brown wood ornaments.


I'm just tying the ornaments into the twine bows on the packages. BOOM. Fancy.


P.S. Did you realized it's only one week until Christmas??? Our last gift came today and I'm working my way through our pile of goodies to get them all Christmas-ready. If you're still looking for last minute gifts, check out our gift guides for boys, ladies, and guys!


P.P.S. I do not wrap the kids gifts fancy like this. I usually just wrap them in our same paper without the bows and fancy add-ons, but this time I splurged (after Christmas last year) to get them each their own roll of paper (Star Wars, Batman, and Spiderman). So they'll each have all their presents wrapped in their own paper. I think they'll like it.

Speaking of the boys:


He cracks me up.
Also I got these beautiful photo ornaments and I think we just might have to get one every year to see how they grow.


How's your wrapping game this year?

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