Make your own Christmas wrapping paper and gift bags.

Guess what?! This is the last of our Christmas craft blogs – and it’s not even December!

Is that terrible? Or just organised? Maybe a bit of both? We’ve done the advent calendar, made the cards, looked at the the gift of giving and now we’ve moved on to wrapping paper and gift bags to put presents (I haven’t started buying yet) in.

Initially I thought it would be fun to stamp our own paper but I used one of those scratchy green cleaning pads, which was the only thing I had to hand. It wasn’t ideal as it soaked up the paint, which was probably to be expected.

Then I thought we could finger paint robins but Freya seemed to clock the huge roll of craft paper and decide maybe playing with her toys would be more fun (I think she managed 10 first).

We ended up with two good-sized sheets of paper but it wasn’t quite enough.

I’m sure I’ve made gift bags in the past but I couldn’t for the life of me remember where to start. Luckily good old YouTube to the rescue. I used this video which was very easy to follow (and the bags turned out well, I think). You can use any sort of paper. I picked craft paper because it’s sturdy. In the video she used newsprint and also actual wrapping paper as well as some she had designed herself. Once I got the hang of it I was able to knock them out quite quickly.

Hopefully people will think they are charming. Now I just need to start shopping for presents to fill them with!

Have you started/finished your Christmas shopping?