Kid-Friendly Handmade Holiday Gift Wrap (by Grace Hester)

I really enjoy the holiday season and engaging in decorating, crafting, cooking, and baking activities with my husband and our two daughters as we build up to Christmas Day. This year, I wanted to try my hand at making a few sheets of our own gift wrap paper.

First I cut up new sponges into triangle shapes,

Then we used these sponges to stamp trees in random patterns on kraft paper, using just white and teal paint (Making Memories paint works well for this because they dry so fast),

. . and inked the the eraser-end of a pencil using a stamp marker in red to stamp round ornaments.

And voila - homemade gift wrap paper! It’s really difficult to mess this up – any splatter or streaks or imperfect stamp image just adds to the character of the paper.

Now for the ribbon. In lieu of traditional twill or nylon ribbons, I designed small pennant flags to spell out "Happy Holidays" as well as other holiday motifs. Printed them onto cardstock paper (you can print these onto light patterned paper or any lighter colored cardstock as well), and cut them out,

Then I used baker’s twine from The Twinery, make small marks same widths apart on the twine itself, and folded the diamond-shaped paper in half to form the triangle flags.

I added some white glue in the folds and used clips to hold them together while the glue dried. I wrapped this banner around the package, and at the end of the banner, I attached a small envelope with two removable wall hooks,

. . so that the child can hang up their pennant banner after unwrapping their gift!

All the materials used were things I already had on hand and the file I designed for the flags can be re-printed again and again for more “pennant ribbons”. You can download the file for your use here.

(you will be brought to the original blog post for the download link)

Here's the final look combining both the gift wrap and "banner-ribbon",

We had so much fun and Naia can't wait to wrap her presents with the paper she made!

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Grace Hester is a full-time working mom who transforms into a prints and paper goods designer during her free time. She enjoys designing for the modern family and you can find these designs on etsy and reach her directly on twitter and facebook.