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HOW TO retail gift wrap

I love wrapping gifts. I knew my friends Sara and Scott had done lots of shopping, so I volunteered to wrap some of their gifts for them. In exchange they treated me to dinner! Of course, I don’t use store bought ribbon, wrapping paper, or even tape! When I told Sara I was going to wrap her presents in the shopping bags they came in, she was a bit skeptical.

I’ll show you four ways to wrap all your gifts without spending more money on wrapping supplies. Your gifts will look great and you’ll save money!

Supplies

  • pair of scissors
  • clothes iron
  • 1 sheet of copy or parchment paper
  • paper or plastic shopping bags

Some of the methods will work with plastic fusing. For details on how to fuse plastic bags check out my tutorial “HOW TO fuse plastic bags“.

6 replies on “HOW TO retail gift wrap”

You are amazing and creative! Thanks for always giving such great idea’s as well as very very easy instructions to follow! Keep up the great work..thanks again!

Love all the gift wrap ideas, Bao! Who knew plastic and paper bags could be so beautiful 🙂
Congrats on the Nate show, too. You’ve inspired alot of people today! Can’t wait to give my spaghetti sauce jars a new life 🙂

Happy Holidays!

Cory
Vancouver, Canada

Thanks for watching and thanks for the kind words, Cory!

Plastic bags can look sophisticated too! It just takes a little tweaking to see it in a new light. I hope you get to try it out!
Take pictures of your jars. I’d love to see what you do with them!

Hey ur really amazing Bao I love this idea not only is it enviromentally friendly since ur recycling but its a $ saver n it looks like great fun. Try out wrapping gifts with magazine pages or newspapers 2! Great way to be creative will do for every occasion thanks!

Thanks, Sarah.

The way I see it we already paid for the “wrapping paper”. It’s just in a the form of a paper or plastic shopping bag, and requires just a few aesthetic tweaks.

Using magazines and newspapers to wrap gifts are DEFINITELY A GREAT IDEA! While we are on the subject of literature…being the big nerd that I am, I have a lot of old comic books. You can use pages of comic books to wrap gifts as well. It would be cool for a child or the nerd in your life. Just make sure that it’s not a vintage comic book that’s worth a boatload of moolah, cause that would be some REALLY expensive wrapping paper!

My other medium of choice is packing paper. It comes with your packages when you order stuff online, and it’s usually white, off-white, or brown. I have a couple rolls collected from my own packages. The neutral colors can make for some sophisticated wrapping. Pair another color with, and it really pops. Adding color also matches it to different occasions – brown paper with orange or black for Halloween, pastels with off-white paper for Easter, etc. Again, you’ve already paid for it, so you might as put it to use!

Sarah, thanks for your wonderful suggestion. As you pointed out, there are so many budget friendly, eco-friendly gift wrapping options. There’s really no need to buy wrapping paper!

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