25+ Simple & Creative DIY Gift Wrap Ideas (Day 13 of 31 days to take the Stress out of Christmas)

This post is part of a series – “31 days to take the Stress out of Christmas”.  You can read all the posts in the series here.  And to make sure you don’t miss a post you can subscribe to have every post delivered to your inbox, or follow me on facebook.

So I don’t know about you but this is pretty much what happens with the gift wrapping situation at Christmas…  I have every intention of getting gifts wrapped way before Christmas Eve but many things have to be done before then like baking, parties, programs, actually buying the gifts, so actually wrapping the gifts gets put off to the last minute and I end up dreading the job instead of enjoying it.

The other thing that frustrates me about gift wrapping is I am sort of over the multiple patterns of paper (10-20 rolls that I have to store every year, several bins of ribbon, etc.)  Most of it has been bought for very cheap on after-Christmas sales but honestly I would just like to have a lot LESS of it taking up valuable storage space in my house.  Because I have several containers of paper, ribbon, tags, bows to store they get pushed farther back in the closet under the stairs and there is no way I am going to get them out to wrap a birthday present during the year.

BUT if I had 2-3 rolls of paper – some brown paper, maybe a solid color paper, and a polka dot/striped paper and one small bin of ribbon it would be much easier to store and easier to pull out to wrap a present in mid year (instead of buying and using expensive gift bags.)    Because be honest – which would you rather receive?  A gift in a store bought gift bag you know took 2 seconds for someone to throw inside or a gift wrapped like one of the gifts below?  It wouldn’t even matter to me what was IN the gift itself, I would enjoy the gift inside even more because of the extra few seconds of time, creativity, and effort in how the present was wrapped!   (Maybe that’s just me – but I love pretty and creative things!)

So let’s browse some ideas for wrapping gifts simply, yet creatively and many can be done with simple brown Kraft paper you can get at the dollar store or craft stores.  Just pick up a colored or plaid ribbon or some string and you can have creative, neutral, pretty wrapped gifts.  I think it would be fun and easy to pick a “theme” each year and just wrap all the presents the same – and it will look so pretty under the tree too!

Because who doesn’t love brown paper packages tied up with string???

Brown paper tied up with simple string

Candy cane tied on top with jute twine

Snowflake embellishment – you can find these in the ornament section 10 for $1.00 or so at Dollar Tree, Wal-Mart, or Target.

Embellish with pinecones and ribbon

Embellish with greenery and pinecones

Use doilies on brown paper

Lace and satin bow – this could be for ANY occasion

Have your kids cut some snowflakes out of plain white paper and use them as embellishments.

Or have them cut out the snowflake out of colored paper for a gift topper.

You can do so much with Washi Tape – I really need to jump on this bandwagon and try it.

Write the names of the recipient right on the paper!

Or stamp them on the paper

Reuse brown paper bags as wrapping paper – these holiday ones from Trader Joe’s are so cute!

Brown paper can have so many different looks depending on what you do with it – I love this plaid ribbon.

Or use burlap ribbon.  They have all kinds of printed burlap ribbon too.

You could embellish some brown paper with some printed paper

Or go with a simple striped/polka dot/patterned paper and a solid color ribbon. 

Here’s black and white polka dot paper

I love this chalkboard wrapping paper done with black kraft paper and chalk markers.

Here’s a simple patterned paper idea

Use sheet music (or paper that looks like sheet music – I have seen it for sale in the stores) as wrapping paper.

Use a solid color paper with a pretty ribbon

Wrap gifts with burlap

You can even use brown paper bags embellished for some cute gift bags.

Or use one of those craft punches to create a pretty border on a brown paper bag.

If you need a fun gag gift idea – wrap your gift in the comics!

Have your kids help you create some fun crafty wrapping paper like this Christmas lights wrapping paper

Looking for some simple tags – here’s some free printable tags. 

Make these DIY chalkboard labels out of regular black paper

There is a customizable printable so you can print these initial tags to embellish a gift

Which one was your favorite?  How do you wrap your gifts?