DIY Gift Decorating - Cre-AYE-tions

I decided to go “simple” this year with my Christmas decorations and gift presentations. The truth is I really don’t like to wrap gifts. I feel like I have to use a variety of wrapping paper, make the same old bows over & over again and affix one of those “pre-fab” gift tags. It has been getting “old” for me. SO…this year I am going to wrap mainly in brown kraft paper and shake things up with different ribbons AND I will be using very cheap ornaments as name tags OR making my own tags.

I hope you enjoy some of my DIY gift tag and gift decorating ideas.

Placard Gift Tags

I usually give baked goods for Christmas. This year I thought I would stick a placard gift tag in with the goodies instead of trying to figure out how to affix one of those “pre-fab” name tags. Here are some pics of how I made these DIY placard gift tags.

I bought this pack of wood planks at Dollar Tree.

I bought this scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby

I traced the wood plank and cut the scrapbook paper to size

Here is the scrapbook paper cut to size of the wood plank.

Here is another one I was working on. I also purchased some wood cubes in a pack at the Dollar Tree. Thought I would use them on this one.

I glued the scrapbook paper to the wood plank with Mod Podge. Here you can see I was doing 3 placard gift tags at one time.

Remember those wood cubes? I decided to paint them and write letters on them with a permanent marker. (this will spell Ho Ho Ho).

I decided to use ribbon on 2 of the placards. I also added raffia to these ribbons….(raffia is my new best friend)

I used some plain kraft tags to use as the name tag part of this project.

Make Your Own Gift Decor

Since I am using kraft paper on most of my gift wrap I will need to come up with a way to “spice up” the blah. If you have a Cricut I encourage you to make templates that can help you. In the below see how I made a simple tree template and used it to decorate a gift.

Here you can see I cut 3 different sizes of a Christmas tree. I did this depending on the size of the package I was decorating. I took a template and traced on scrapbook paper. After I cut out 3 trees from 3 different scrapbook papers I punched holes and strung the trees through some jute twine.

DIY Gif Decorating — I took that jute twine and tied it around the gift for a simple gift decor.

Use Ornaments for Gift Decor

There are some really cut ornaments out there that are REALLY cheap. I know everyone talks about going to Hobby Lobby, Wal Mart and Dollar Tree BUT I also found a lot of gems at Dollar General. I urge you to take a trip there. In the below pics you will see some of the ornaments I have purchased at Wal Mart and Dollar General. I have not wrapped gifts yet BUT these are my plans. I have staged various ribbons that I can use with each of these. These pics are what I am going to do with my gift wraps.

Fur wreath ornament purchased at Wal Mart.

As soon as all my gifts come in from Amazon I am ready to wrap!!!

Conclusion: My Family Traditions with DIY Gift Tags

Christmas was a big time of the year for my mother to recycle. My sister-in-law, Tracy, and I have “mastered” Christmas gift opening at my mom and dad’s house. Remember, my mom is a repurpose fiend. As the grandkids open their gifts Tracy and I are following behind them grabbing the tissue paper (folding them neatly) and rescuing all bags and boxes (folding them neatly). After all gifts are opened Tracy and I combine our conquests and graciously hand them back to my mother to reuse. This tradition is in my genes. I also do the same at birthday parties or any events that include gifts. When you do such hoarding of these reusable treasures you must have space to keep them…..you need to be able to easily retrieve them so you do not waste money on something that you may already have. Very rarely do I purchase a bag or a box any more. This habit of reusing is very budget conscious (not fruit loopy, AT ALL!).

Gift tags were another repurposing opportunity for my mother. My mother would recycle/repurpose last year’s Christmas cards that she received in the mail into gift tags. When I was a little girl I would do this with mom. Mom would cut out a portion of the card (ie. A particular part of a picture on the card), punch a hole in the end, thread a ribbon through it and use as a gift tag. I actually JUST created some tags for use from this past year’s Christmas cards we received. This is a fun project to do with the kids. Kids see things we don’t see. In fact my “first go around” cutting these cards only netted me about 15 cards. I went back and looked at the scraps and was able to see about 8 more possibilities that I missed the first time around. Don’t get me wrong….some of my visual creativity resulted in some “not so cute” tags….it will happen. Just scrap them and move on. Here are some photos of some of the ones I just quickly did. Keep in mind you can also do this with Birthday cards or really ANY cards!