BROWN PAPER PACKAGES
I’m taking the downtime after the holidays to start thinking about next year’s holiday. Seriously. I hope that if I put a little pre-planning in now I’ll have a smooth sailing Christmas next year. All my presents will be made and wrapped before December 24, holidays cards will be received in the correct year and I will be fast asleep in the hours leading up to Santa’s arrival. This is how Martha does it. She has already planned and photographed the Holiday dinners we will be reading about 11 months from now. I aspire only to be on time, that’s all.
I had the last minute idea to use some fabric scraps in the last bits of my wrapping this year. I cut pieces of kraft paper and zigzag stitched a scrap of fabric to the top. Then I put the gift in the middle of two pieces of kraft paper and stitched all around to enclose it into the package. This clearly won’t work for large gifts, but for many of the small fabric gifts, it’s just perfect. I’ll probably use recycled newspapers or such next year.
I found this post yesterday on Wild Olive. Her version with painting looks really sweet and colourful. I’d love to try this too.
Sewing on paper is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. My cousin, Heather, made the beautiful holiday card below that she stitched on her machine. I really love the black and white photos of her bunnies with the red stitching. Brilliant!
One note about sewing paper on your sewing machine. You should definitely change your needle when you’re done. Sewing on paper will dull your need very quickly. Save that needle for future paper sewing projects and get a fresh one for sewing with fabric.
I also received some lovely gifts wrapped in fabric this year. One in a sweet tea towel and the other in a piece of vintage cotton. Do you have any creative wrapping ideas to share?
11 comments
i love it karyn!
and good call on the needle…i have been sewing on cards and i forgot about paper’s dulling effects on needles.
and i just stopped by your flickr.i am so excited for the new fabrics you’ve ordered!
LOVE the addition of the fabric on there. I’m going to have to try that…
i reaaally like that card your cousin made!
i would draw or hand stitch on new or used paper/felt/fabric and use those as wrapping paper. i truly have a passion for packaging and this brown paper packages are so loverly!!
Love the card!!! This year we (my lovely daughters and I) stamped brown kraft paper for wrapping paper. We used wine corks as the stampers (I work at an Italian restaurant – so I can get loads of them without ever buying a single bottle of wine!). The cork is really easy to cut – we made letters and snowmen and trees. I did take pictures, but they will go on the blog next year before Christmas. Because I’m like Martha. I plan ahead. (or, because we were still stamping 2 days before Christmas and it was too late to blog about it!) Pick the reason you like best!
i’ve received a gift wrapped in re-used silver tissue (which i actually like better all worn & crinkled) and then stuffed inside purple fruit netting (the elasticky plastic stuff used to prevent bruising). i really enjoy wrapping that repurposes mundane, disposable objects…i think the newspaper is a good call for next year!
Great idea! I’m going to do this for birthday cards and presents!
I never thought about sewing on paper… Great idea!! Personally, I love using the comics for wrapping paper…
Beautiful! I have always enjoyed using kraft paper but have used it in traditional ways, tying the packages off with rafia. This is a great idea!
Sweet! I let my 4-yr old loose at the kraft paper with paint, markers and crayons. It also gave me a chance to show her the cool effect of painting with watercolors over crayon. We made lots of white crayon snowflakes/shapes, then painted over them with blue watercolors.
I didn’t even know you could sew on paper! But apparently you can.. and it looks super awesome! Thanks for the tip of changing out the needle when you are done.. it makes sense that it would dull it, but definitely not something I would consider! Great idea. Kudos.
-Molly
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