Economic Gift Wrapping

When my daughter taught 2nd. grade, she always had theme parties for her students. When Valentines Day came around, I covered twenty-some shoe boxes with white butcher paper; which were then given to her students to decorate. That one $20.00 roll of white butcher paper has lined my drawers, covered my kitchen table when I do craft projects, and I even used it to make my own pattern for the dress I wore to my daughter's wedding. I have also wrapped well over 100 gifts with it. There is still 1/2 of a roll left. I purchased it at the Smart & Final store. This Christmas I didn't buy any decorations or wrapping paper, or bags, ribbons or tissue paper. I recycled bags (beautiful ones I saved from last year) and some striped paper also. I want to show you some packages wrapped from the butcher paper. I embellished them with old bobbles and greenery from my Italian cypress tree. I had some old pipe cleaners from my daughter's class projects. I wrapped the pipe cleaners around a pen to coil them for a nice bouncy look!

Notice my snowman! He is made from a garbanzo bean can and from a tomato sauce can. I sprayed the cans high gloss white. They fit inside each other, so I filled him with chocolates. His head was an old ornament which I glued to the bottom of the bean can. I made 20 of these. They were used instead of boxes for smaller gifts!
                                

I have a bag in my garage filled with old stuffed toys that belonged to my daughter when she was little. Many of them were Beanie Babies and some from Hallmark toys. I hot-glued them to beautiful boxes instead of  using bows. They made appealing gift packages for Christmas .
Notice my gingerbread man. He was made from a Trader Joe's shopping bag. My daughter needed 25 exchange presents in a hurry. I got 2 Trader Joe's good, thick brown bags and placed cotton quilting batting from Joann's fabric store in between layers of the bags. I got my gingerbread cookie cutter and out-lined it with a brown crayon on to the bag. I then sewed the layers together I hole punched at the top of his head and strung red ribbon through. I glued on buttons, puff-painted all around them to look like frosting, and voila! Ornaments accomplished for just pennies each and I still had enough batting to make
4 Christmas pillows!
                                   
Using odd ornaments makes beautiful packages! My daughter is expecting a little boy in May. When I was expecting my little boy, my mother presented me with this little statue of Mary and baby Jesus. I thought it would be appropriate to pass it on to Sarah. I couldn't find a box at the last minute, so I glued it on to a recycled Christmas card. I used baby yarn from a blanket I had crocheted for a friend's baby, and some booties from the Dollar Tree store. The card had a silver glittery snowflake on it. The package was beautiful. That good old faithful butcher paper is a new best friend!