However, I don’t buy any wrapping paper for environmental reasons. It seems completely wrong to me to purchase heavily processed paper to be used once and then thrown away.
SO I re-use any sort of colourful paper I have, and if the recipient can’t appreciate a gift wrapped nicely in something other than wrapping paper, we’re probably not close enough that they need to worry about getting such ‘trashy’ gifts from me again.

I regularly reuse wrapping paper that was on a gift given to me, and I currently have a large stock of colourful paper from the inside of shoeboxes. It does the job of nicely covering the gifted item so the recipient can have something to open up.

A female human being is called a “woman.” Or if she’s under 18, a “girl” (or possibly “my daughter”).”

Yes. Thank you for pointing this out again, Johanna.

I’m still rocking a $1 roll of paper I bought 2 years ago. $20 on wrapping paper? What? Is it made out of hammered silver?

I don’t understand why we need to spend $2-4 on a gift bag when our gift wrapping reflects the personality of the gift giver.

We also store our decorations in heavyweight printed or tin storage boxes with metal handles. After emptying them for the holiday decorating, we use those boxes for the family gifts! We sometimes use tissue paper inside, and sometimes our old family nostalgic Christmas tea towels from grandma’s house. It’s kind of sappy, but we love it!

For other gifts- I use interesting remnant papers from art projects, or lovely fabrics and satin ribbon, or recycled gift bags. Things that can be reused. I have a bigger than penny-pinching problem with the waste generated by millions of people wrapping trillions of presents, only to the have the paper dyes eventually leech into the ground after only 30 seconds of use, as a bizarre way to celebrate good will toward men. We all know what landfills are these days, we cannot claim ignorance of that amount of yearly waste. I try to use long term solutions, or repurposed/rescued wrapping.

I’m currently using up someone else’s wrapping stash – its quite vintage and lots of fun!

My best gift wrap? I wound a ball of thick yarn around a small jewelry box in which resided a very fine vintage opal ring. It was fun watching the process!

But, all things aside, there’s a lot of fun in

I don’t think I’ve spent $20 on wrapping paper in my entire life, but we also grew up on top and bottom of boxes being wrapped separately. Bows were also scotch taped on.

Two years ago I wrapped everything in brown paper with a wide gold and red ribbon that was wired so I could shape it into a large bow. The gifts looked really beautiful. But I used a roll of brown crafting paper instead of paper bags. Bags are very thick and I find the paper doesn’t fold nicely for neatly wrapped gifts.

Before the existance of plastic tape and FedEx, boxes were wrapped in brown paper and secured with string for shipping by mail. It was the best we could do to keep the contents safe from the elements.

My parents reused the same dozen gift boxes with tissue and bows for years, only the lid was wrapped. The wrapping paper was Food Fair grocery bags – the company printed paper bags one year with some Christmasy designs and my mother saved those bags to carefully wrap some box lids. There were two box lids wrapped with wallpaper for birthdays. Everyone got clothes, a few coins, hard candy and one toy. When there truly wasn’t enough money to buy wrapping paper, there also wasn’t enough money to buy gifts to wrap.

To wrap a gift in brown paper (or newspaper and other paper scraps) and twine is like attending a wedding dressed in worn coveralls with muddy shoes. I have seen some very creatively wrapped gifts but the vast majority come across as cheap, cheap, cheap.

I’ve done newspaper for a while. I’ve seen some really pretty ways to do it with brown paper on pinterest, but my grocery store doesn’t have brown paper bags. This year, to go with my newspaper, I got some paint chips in various shades of red and green and will cut the recipients name out of those and glue it to my package. That should make it a little more festive :)

I buy wrapping paper and ribbons throughout the year. I’m also not above decimating old cards we’ve received for gift tags.

We use all the ways you mentioned except the magazine covers – that’s a new one for me, but a great idea! Also have used items mentioned in comments (except #8 who has no suggestions – too bad you don’t like the idea of magazine covers, I think it’s quite creative). This year I recycled calendar pages. I’ve also reused calendar pages for stationary.

I’m a crafter at heart and love to find ways to reuse things that are striking in one way or another.

Happy Holidays, Trent and family!