Beyond Soap: Wrapping a Shower Gift (Cheaply!)

I'm going to a wedding shower this weekend and have a number of packages to wrap for the event. Since I won't have time to shop for gift wrap (nor do I want to spend the money on gift wrap), I began brain-storming on ways I could wrap a gift so that it had a somewhat upscale organic look without spending $$. I started scavenging things available around my house and in the warehouse. OK, let me just put it out there... I was looking for FREE stuff.

This is what I came up with. I snagged some sheets of the brown kraft paper that we have on rolls in the warehouse. I used this to wrap the gift boxes. To add some color and jazz it up a bit, I overwrapped the kraft paper using some printed cellophane rolls that I had around the house. The design I used happen to be a spiral print.

Hmmm... what to do about a bow? I wanted something that would fit the natural theme of the wrap. AH, hah! How about cutting and curling strips of the brown kraft paper. Perfect! I curled 6-8 strips and then stapled them together. I grabbed a hank of raffia from the warehouse on my way out the door. It would be ideal for dressing up the kraft paper and would lend itself to the "earthy" feel I was going for.

Exacta-mo! It worked. A few strands of raffia centered on top of the curled kraft strips was just the ticket.

Oh dear, what to do about a card. I hadn't even given this a thought. No time to run out and buy one. What could I possibly do in Publisher? I know! Some fun quotes about marriage in various fonts and colors. Yes! That will work. I printed out the quotes on white cardstock then added a second page with a personalized greeting . Some natural raffia threaded through a couple of hold punches and I was good to go. The card pages were intact.

The final touch was a strip of brown kraft paper around the outside of the card. It was held in place by a clear 4 x 2 inch label printed with the bride and groom's names and a quote from their wedding invitation. Since I had to print a sheet of 10 labels, I used the remainder of the labels to help hold the raffia ribbon and kraft strips in place on the wrapped packages.