They say necessity is the mother of invention, and I’ve learned that procrastination is the mother of creativity. More specifically, last-minute gift wrapping is the mother of desperate solutions like using zip ties when you’re out of ribbon. Over the years I’ve come up with some pretty good holiday gift wrap embellishment ideas using whatever’s around the house. You can call it cheap; I call it recycling, and isn’t saving the planet the greatest gift of all?
Come on, y’all, don’t act like you haven’t been there. Every November, I vow to stock up on everything I need for the perfect wrapping station, and every December 24, I’m scrounging for duct tape and tinfoil. So get what you can and dump out your junk drawer for the rest.
Old Buttons
I’ve never met a random button I didn’t save, and finally, I understand why. During the holiday season, there’s no more valuable resource than those little white buttons that come with every dress shirt. Warm up your glue gun, because you’ll be using them to mimic snow on blank wrapping paper or ornaments on cutout Christmas trees. These 3D polka dots will enliven anything. Wrap a gift with plain white tissue paper, and you can use larger black buttons to create the eyes and mouth of a snowman. Can you cut a triangle out of orange construction paper? Boom, there’s his nose.
Backyard Greenery
Raid the backyard for greenery such as pine needles and fire up the glue gun again: You can top gifts with a real mini Christmas tree. It’s not last-minute; it’s fresh! Use a toothbrush to decorate your greenery with white paint for frosted branches; heck, you can dot it with Crest, and it’ll smell good, too. If you don’t have any proper wrapping paper, all the better. Cut up a brown paper grocery bag, and you’ve got “kraft” paper to go with it. Tie it all together with twine and finish with a smug Martha Stewart smile.
Board Game Parts
When everybody’s home for the holidays, you remember little things about your family, like how nobody wants to play Scrabble anymore without a Q. Was it lost? Was it stolen by a sore loser? It doesn’t matter—is the glue gun still going? Because you can use the remaining tiles to spell out someone’s name on a gift if you’ve run out of tags. You can spell out anything, really, as long as it’s festive, age-appropriate, and doesn’t involve a Q.
If you’re well and truly stuck, search online for more thrifty holiday gift wrap embellishment ideas and pass them on to your friends. It’ll be the best re-gift you ever gave them.
