Wrap it up!

Wrap it up!
  • Look what I made from grocery delivery bags!

SO last summer I ordered most of my groceries because of Covid. Actually it’s weird that I never had ordered groceries ever before since I hate hate hate going to the grocery store. But anyway I received a lot of frozen groceries in these silver, bubble wrap bags and of course being a person who likes to make things I thought “these are cool! I’ll save these for some sort of art project.” And so they have been in my basement ever since. You see, when you are a creative person it can be really hard to throw things away: instead of seeing trash, you see an objects potential…. if only you had the time. Haha. Well, in this case I did turn garbage into something beautiful and useful and now I”m feeling just a little bit smug about it.

I’m gifting a lot of handmade masks to people this Holiday season, and was looking for an inexpensive (well, ok, free) way to wrap those presents. And then I remembered the silver bags in my basement- perfect!

These little packages only use the silver bags and a little string (or in my case hemp yarn) to tie it all together. I made a cute pompom/snowball thingy to top some of them (and hide the place where the package is tied together) and I also made another version with a lovely flower on top. You will need to use a yarn/darning/tapestry needle for the flower, but otherwise you just need pencil and paper (for the pattern), sharpie for tracing, scissors, a silver bag, and a 15-20″ piece of string/strong yarn. When you are wrapping your gift, you could use one small piece of tape- but you might not even need that.

So here is what I did…

  • I made a paper pattern (out of another Grocery bag!) with these dimensions.

This is about the biggest size wrapping that I could fit out of my bags (with scraps leftover to make the pompoms).

  • I rounded all of the corners a bit and put a hole in each of the 4″ ends (about 1″ from each end).
I used a sharpie to trace pattern onto bag.

Then I cut out my shape. It was surprisingly easy to cut through both layers of the bag at the same time, so I did that and made 2 at a time. I cut the small holes near each end by folding the end in half and cutting out little notches along the fold. Set this aside and make a pompom or flower for the top.

For the pompom:

I cut the bottom folds of the bag into long strips by cutting off the ends.

I got 4 long strips from the folded part at the bottom of the bag. I needed 2 pieces for each pompom.

I folded each long strip in half the long way, and cut little lines stopping about 1/4″ from the folded edge. The fringe was cut in 1/4″ increments. You will need to do this to two pieces- for one pompom.

You will need to pop all of the bubbles that go down the center line of each piece (where my thumb is). This allows you to tie the pompom very tightly at the center.

Then gather up that long strip by pleating it back and forth. Its totally ok for it to not be pleated perfectly! You will need to do this to the second strip as well and add it to the first. This makes the pompom fluffy!

Tie a 15″ piece of string or strong yarn very tightly around the center of the pompom and knot securely. Do not trim the string/yarn. You will use this to tie your package together.

Fluff up that pompom!! And trim it a bit if necessary to make it look nice and round. But do NOT cut the string/yarn!

For the flower:

Draw a spiral that looks something like this on a silver bag. This spiral measures about 8″ in circumference.

Cut it out with scissors. Cut along the inner spiral as well.

Cut out petal shapes as shown, leaving them connected at the bottom near the spiraling line. This doesn’t have to be perfect.

Thread a tapestry/yarn/darning needle with a 15-20″ piece of string/strong yarn and sew a running stitch along the bottom edges of petals as shown above. Each stitch is about 1″ long.

Pull on the string/yarn to gather up the petals, spiraling the petals as you do this so that they sit on top of each other. Tie the yarn ends to each other in a knot. Do NOT trim ends as you will use them to tie package together!!

Wrapping the present

Place gift in center of wrapping and fold up two sides (the ones without the holes. You can use a piece of tape to secure it here. Or if your gift isn’t very big, you probably don’t even need to tape it.

Bring the last two ends toward each other (the ones with the holes). Thread one strand of string/yarn (from the pompom or flower) through one of the holes in package (from outside to inside) and then thread the same string/yarn end up through the other hole (from inside to outside) and tie string/yarn ends together in a very tight knot. Cut ends of yarn leaving about 3/8″ tails (these won’t show).

Yay!!!! Your present is wrapped! Now tell me you don’t feel just a little bit smug.