Thrifty Gift Wrap

Greetings Friends! It's all Christmas at the Johansson house right now.  I leave to go up to Rockford for the holidays on Tuesday, so I'm getting all of my gift buying,  making and wrapping completed this week.

I have always enjoyed wrapping presents and aspire to make each one a little work of art. I also try to be somewhat "green" about my wrapping, reusing and re-purposing papers and ribbons from year to year. All my relatives know to hand the salvageable ribbons/bows over to me when we are opening presents.

This year a spent a whopping $4.25 on wrapping supplies. $4.00 went to a roll of brown craft paper.  This is my go-to wrapping paper and I really don't use anything else. I like its earthy, neutral tone and by changing out the ribbon, I can make it work for any occasion. The remaining $0.25 went to a bag of vintage sewing notions that I picked up at a thrift store a while back. There was lace, rick-rack, and seam binding in a variety of colors and all in its original packaging. Score!

I'm not all that big into bows, so I tend to wrap the ribbons around the packages to create stripes.  I then tie or tape the ribbons on the underside of the packages. It's not all that pretty on the back side, but it's the front that matters anyways right?

This is my mom's birthday gift.  (Her birthday is December 19th.) I just taped on the fake flower that I found in my trusty wrapping materials box, added some criss-crossed ribbon in complementary colors (also from my box) and voila!

I used a Crown Royal bag to wrap up this gift. I've got a small arsenal of these and have re-used them several times in a variety of manners. They are great for a rolled up t-shirt, jewelry, lotions, candles, etc.

How did/are you going to wrap up your holiday gifts this year? I'd love to see what you did.  Feel free to leave me a link in the comments so I can check it out!

Happy Holidays folks! Ta-ta for now.