Wrapping gifts is one of my favourite things about the countdown to Christmas! I just love settling down with a glass of mulled wine in front of a festive film and getting all creative with my wrapping. And I know it’s still pretty early for it, but I’ve already been getting extra crafty with wrapping gifts for my nephews.
This Christmas all my wrapping paper is from Dunelm and is completely recyclable. And in this post I have used their simple brown and red craft paper to wrap some lovely personalised children’s books from In The Book.
This post contains gifted items
Christmas Character Gift Wrap
Christmas characters are my current favourite way of wrapping Christmas presents for kids. It’s so simple, yet the finished result is really effective – so festive and cute at the same time.
I used this character wrapping style on What Makes Me Great? – a cute Disney Board Book featuring lots of different Disney characters and their positive qualities, and personalised with your child’s name. It’s a great gift idea for a toddler, especially a Disney fan!
How to Gift Wrap the Characters
What You’ll Need for Rudolf:
- Brown wrapping paper
- Googly stick-on eyes or eyes drawn on white paper
- Gold or brown card, cut into the shape of antlers
- A circle of red card for the nose (mine was glittery!)
- Black sharpie pen
- Scissors, tape and a glue stick
What You’ll Need for Santa:
- Red wrapping paper
- Strip of black paper or ribbon
- Silver card cut into a buckle-size rectangle (mine was glittery)
- White paper cut into the shape of a beard and fur trim.
- Scissors, tape and a glue stick
Rudolf was assembled simply by sticking the eyes, nose and antlers onto my brown paper package, and drawing a mouth in black pen.
I created Santa by sticking the white beard and fur trim to the top and bottom of my red paper parcel. I created the belt by threading the black paper strip (or piece of ribbon) through 2 holes in my silver rectangle to create a buckle effect. Then I wrapped the belt all the way around the middle of the gift.
That’s all it took to create these adorable Christmas character gifts!
Christmas Scene Gift Wrap
The second book I wrapped was the Christmas Story Collection – a large hardback book of 5 beautifully illustrated Christmas stories, presented in a deluxe foil embossed gift box. It’s a gorgeous heirloom gift and one that can be treasured by your family every Christmas!
For such a beautiful book I wanted to do something special with the gift wrap, even though I was still using simple brown craft paper as a base. My idea was to create a simple festive black line illustration of a Christmas scene on the brown paper backdrop, and then add a few highlights and embellishments to finish it off. I decided to go with a fireplace scene, with stockings hung by the fire.
How to Create the Gift Wrap Scene
What You’ll Need:
- Brown wrapping paper
- Black sharpie pen
- White pen or white ink/paint with a thin brush
- Red paper cut into the shape of stockings
- Scissors, tape and a glue stick
Step one is to draw the scene onto the gift paper in black pen. I was nervous about the ink from the Sharpie pen seeping through the paper and marking the gift, so I measured out the rectangle space I would be working on, drew the illustration first, and wrapped up the book after it was finished.
Tip: Search online for simple Christmas line drawings that you can copy. I found some great fireplace illustrations that were simple and easy to use as a guide.
Once the main drawing is done in black ink, add some highlights in white, and then wrap up the gift with the paper when all the ink is dry.
Finally, create the red stocking shapes and draw on any names and visual details you want, before sticking them onto the wrapped gift. This will be a joint gift for both my nephews, so I thought these stockings would be a nice way to add both their names to the gift. They act as gift tags as well as cute finishing touches!
And that’s it! So simple, yet really effective and festive.
Creative Gift Wrap Inspiration
As you can see, wrapping something as simple as a rectangle-shaped book, in something as plain as craft paper doesn’t need to be boring. And hopefully you’ve taken some gift wrap inspiration from this post.
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