Etsy Monday bySarahRenaeClark Downloadable Christmas wrapping

Printing Christmas wrapping from the Internet has pros and cons.  There are many, many amazing graphic designers who offer designs that are far better than you will ever see in a store. Many are free, as a way to introduce you to their work. You can print on recycled paper. On the down side -- the size is usually limited to letter or legal size paper, so unless you are pretty crafty with tapes and design, you are limited to small gifts.  But more importantly, the color options are only going to look as good as your color printer and your color ink levels.  So I usually stick to black and white designs.

bySarahRenaeClark.

When I found this creative designer on Etsy, I thought she had come up with the perfect solution.  She offers black and white designs that you can color in with markers or pencils. You could certainly use them as is, but coloring sounds fun and her designs really lend themselves to coloring. They are beautifully intricate. She has gift wrap designs, gift tags and more!

Here's her tag option.

Pretty festive!

Here are her wrapping designs:

I think they look great as is in black and white

But look how fun with red pencils!

And she has a template for Christmas Crackers/Bon Bons!  I have read descriptions of Christmas Crackers for years in English novels, and never understood what they were:

From Whychristmas.com:

Christmas crackers are a traditional Christmas favorite in the UK. They were first made in about 1845-1850 by a London sweet maker called Tom Smith. He had seen the French 'bon bon' sweets (almonds wrapped in pretty paper). He came back to London and tried selling sweets like that in England and also included a small motto or riddle in with the sweet. But they didn't sell very well.

Embed from Getty Images

Legend says that, one night, while he was sitting in front of his log fire, he became very interested by the sparks and cracks coming from the fire. Suddenly, he thought what a fun idea it would be, if his sweets and toys could be opened with a crack when their fancy wrappers were pulled in half.

Here's her template:

Christmas Bon Bons

 Happy coloring!

12 Days of Christmas

 This year, my husband and I are doing 12 days of Christmas. 12 gifts, each no more than ten bucks (more or less) we open them with our morning coffee.  He has done amazingly well! His gifts so far have been really thoughtful and things I would not have gotten but love now that I have them.

Here are my first wrapping efforts ready to go under the tree:

And it should be noted that my cats "helped me" wrap.  I don't know how I would have finished if they weren't messing with the ribbons and chasing the ends.😾😽

DIY Gift Wrapping from dollar store and free printables

I have started my Christmas wrapping. My first package needs to go to my daughter, son-in-law and their family. So first, I did some scribbling, along the lines of what I talked about in this earlier post,

Materials:
White Wrapping Paper
Dollar Store Glitter Glue
Dollar Store Ribbons
Print it yourself gift tags

I was loosely trying to do a Christmas tree, succeeded better on one than the other, but I still liked them both. I wrapped, scribbled with the glitter glue, glued on a simple knotted ribbon piece for each and used gift tags I had printed. Done.

Next, I tried using printable wrapping paper and gift tags along the lines of these posts:
 Free Printable Wrapping Paper  
What with white paper

Materials:
8.5 x 11 printer paper
Glossy photo paper for the tags
Ribbons and glitter tape from the Dollar Store.
White wrapping paper.
Leftover glitter paper bats from Halloween
hole punch

The gift wrap I downloaded was from a french site,  hello hello.  When I printed, I made sure that the print settings put down maximum ink. One of the reasons I stuck with black and white is my inkjet wasn't doing so great with the colored versions.

I liked the reindeer antlers and the trees.

The paper I printed was 8.5 x 11, so works only on very small gifts. On a larger gift, I tried folding a band to go around the front, but ended up adding a couple different glitter ribbons and some glitter tape to hold down the edges of the band. Finally, I had some glittery cardboard bats that didn't survive Halloween that well so I cut them up to add some accents to the gift tags.

The tags I ended up using were from yourmarketingbff.com.. As mentioned before, I printed these on photo paper. They have a number of free designs, I started from this page because I found the tags from these pictures using the wrapping paper I had downloaded. 

Reindeers and Trees!

But ended up with this version which you can find for free in their shop:

And I'm Done.

Maiko Nagao Free Printables

This graphic designer really has some excellent free printables suitable for the holidays on her blog.  Check this out:

Perfect graphic gift tags.

This works for more than the holidays, but I think it would be very holiday chic with some red ribbons.

Okay so not exactly gift wrapping, but seriously how cute is this anti-monster spray label?

Spray away the monsters!

it's black and white

Black and White Christmas wrapping from 30s magazine.

Black and White Lace

Urban girl.