Hey everyone! Welcome back and I hope you are all doing well. So, this year for the holidays I thought I would try out some fun ideas. Since I love nature and being outdoors I thought I would bring that inside for the holidays.
I will give you a brief run down of what I have done and then go into some more details below. I made wrapping paper, 2 gift bags that look like ginger bread houses, gift tags, assorted decor and other embellishments. Plus I ended up upcycling and or reusing a bunch of different things that I already had on hand in my wrappings.
Gift wrap details:
I used a brown paper bag which I cut to fit the package. I had some rubber stamps on hand that were pretty shapes however they were not specifically snowflakes. So, think outside the box. When I put them onto the paper and into this context they magically become snowflakes though lol. I used gouche paint because that is what I had on hand but acrylic works well too. I applied the white paint onto the rubber stamp and stamped it on the paper bag. Both gouche and acrylic paint dry fast which is good for crafting. I then put a little bit of rubber cement onto the paper and then I added very fine fairy dust glitter onto it.
I wrapped the package and tied it with some snowflake shaped ribbon that I already had on hand.
This next gift below I did the same thing except I reused some white paper that I had on hand. Then I used the same rubber stamps but I painted some of them white, some light pastel pink and some light pastel blue. Next put some rubber cement on the snowflakes when they were dry and sprinkled on some iridescent confetti onto them. Then I tied it with ordinary kitchen string which I always have on hand. I added a sprig of rosemary, a candy cane, a rosebud from the garden and a white chicken feather. (The chicken feather is from Soft Rainbow which is the neighbor's chicken that came to visit my house almost every day last summer. My housemate fell in love with her. My housemate was so sad when Soft Rainbow and her family moved away this past fall. So, the feather is a way to personalize this gift for her).
This gift that is shown behind the gift with the candy cane and the feather is also wrapped with more recycled/upcycled white paper. I cut out a couple of bird shapes with a page from an old book which I glued to the package (you can do whatever shape you want, it can be hearts, snow flakes or flowers or Christmas trees whatever floats your boat). Then to make the berries, I took a pencil eraser and dipped it onto a red rubber stamp pad and made three little berries in between the two birds. I have a rubber stamp set that are letters of the alphabet that look like type set and at the bottom of the gift I spelled out my housemates name with the rubber stamps and red stamp ink (not shown). For the red net around the gift I used red netting from a produce bag that came for the grocery store that I upcycled for this purpose. Then I attached a Christmas tree brooch onto the net. Here is another photo of this below.
Next up are the ginger bread houses that I made out of brown paper bags (they are lunch bag sized). Of course I had these on hand too.
So with these I took a bag and folded the top corners (to make the peak of the roof) then I painted on the ginger bread house design onto the bag and then I turned the bag over and used a hole punch to punch out two holes. Then I put the gift inside and then I threaded the red yarn that I had on hand along with a gift tag that I made. In front of the ginger bread house is a small bundle of a few sprigs of rosemary, a small sprig of peppermint and another couple of rosebuds tied with white kitchen string. It is totally okay if these little herb bundles get dry in between now and Christmas because they look cute fresh or dry. I was able to get my housemate these packages ASAP after I wrapped them to put under her tree so she can enjoy them while they are still fresh though.
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This is the back side of the ginger bread house.
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Next package up I took another paper bag that I had on hand and I wrapped up the package. Then I did some urban foraging and found a small piece of a cedar bough/limb. I used my hot glue gun on it and glued it to the package. Then I took a yellow pressed dried flower (from my garden) and glued it to the top. So now it looks like a Christmas tree with a star on top. (At the end of the summer I pressed a bunch of small flowers in between the pages of some large books. So, I am set up through out the year with pressed flower for crafting now). If you don't happen to have any pressed flowers on hand just use a star sticker instead or just cut a star out of paper. Then I took white paint and dabbed it onto the tree to look like snow.
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I was a little heavy handed with my paint so it looks kind of like a snow storm but it's all good lol!
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In the next photo that is below I had a miniature burlap sack that I have reused a few different times and ways before this. I originally got it when I bought some food grade cocoa butter years ago at wholefoods and I thought it was way too cute to toss out. So, I thought that this would make a great little gift bag in among this mix. I tied some red yarn around it and added one of the tags that I decorated onto it along with a small enamel apple pin.
For tags I just used plain manila tags and on this one I added a tiny pressed leaf that looks like a little fern or a miniscule tree (photo above). On the back of the tag I wrote down the directions that go with the gift that I made that is inside of the tiny burlap sack.
This tag above I used tiny rose buds from my garden that I let sit out to air dry. Then I hot glued them onto the tag into the shape of a heart. On the back I wrote Merry Christmas. These tags can actually be reused again next year as a Christmas tree ornament, just add an ornament hanger to it and hang it from the tree.
Above is another tag that I decorated with a fun little assortment of pressed flowers and leaves.
After I was done wrapping I put everything in a big red basket with a flat bottom. At each end of the basket I tucked in some small juniper cuttings from the bush outside, so they snuggle in among the packages. Along with a pine cone that I dabbed some white paint onto to look like snow and a little bit of glitter to give it some sparkle.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post. It was so much fun putting together all of these gifts and wrapping.
Until next time!
x
AlchemyBloomsPdx
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