Homemade gift wrap, Christmas edition

So you made your gifts, but now what? Traditional wrapping can be expensive and often involves a great deal of waste. If you have ever looked in the trash after Christmas morning the amount of paper, bows, and other wrapping is depressing.

In the past I came up with a few creative ways to wrap gifts, including using old maps, which turned out really well, and plain white paper (which my brother and I may have glued macaroni onto to create a winter wonderland scene… last year). I also really like to use linens as wrapping. This year for my mom’s birthday I used a kitchen towel (that she picked out) to wrap her new pie plate. We have also used baby blankets and wash cloths to wrap a baby shower gift.

But this year I was feeling particularly uninspired, that is until I stumbled across a few ideas. I prefer things that can be reused (like towels and blankets, or pieces of fabric that can be tied into a tote bag), but recylced/upcycled materials are really nice too: