How to Wrap Gifts for Free

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By Virginia Allain
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Wrap Gifts for Free

Gift wrap adds to the cost of gift giving. Finding free gift wrap means more can be spent on the actual gift. Here are ways to wrap a gift without spending a bundle.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

a thrifty nature
a place to store gift wrap
aluminum foil
Sunday comic pages from the newspaper

Step 1

Save colorful paper from shopping bags. Trim away the seams and you have flat and decorative paper to wrap a gift.
Step 2

Print out personalized gift wrap from your computer. Here's my eHow article on how to do this: http://www.ehow.com/how_2197992_personalized-gift-wrap.html
Step 3

Put a clue to the location of a present inside a very tiny box or in an envelope. This works especially well for large or hard-to-wrap gifts. To make it even more challenging, have a number of clues, each leading to the next one. Put the gift somewhere that the recipient won't stumble upon it ahead of time.
Step 4

Save gift wrap (and ribbons) from a gift you receive. Store the paper flat for future use. If the folds from the original use are obvious, cut out a smaller piece in the unfolded part of the paper. Save it for a tiny gift. Keep the ribbons and bows in a box so they don't get crushed.
Step 5

Look at any kind of paper that you have on hand. How will the gift look wrapped in the comics section from the newspaper? How about aluminum foil from the kitchen? Expand your thinking beyond ordinary gift wrap from the store.
Step 6

Rummage in the sewing basket or craft supplies for substitute ribbons. Consider anything left over from a craft or knitting project. Yarn looks great, expecially the thick kind. Also look at ribbons and lace.

Comments

Countrymom said

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on 2/13/2009 One other idea is when you purchase an item some stores will gift wrap the item for free. Our local gift shop (and I only buy on clearance) will gift wrap for free. I may not need the item for months as a gift but I can store it with a sticky note on it that its for such and such and its already wrapped for free.

veryirie said

on 10/14/2008 Very good article!

xtraordinary said

on 7/23/2008 Excellent tips! One place I sometimes find gift wrap or gift bags is the local Goodwill. Some of the bags are second hand and some of the wrapping is not a full roll. It seems that on certain days of the month or week, they get a delivery of items from Target, so you can get brand new items like this very cheaply, including bows!