Make your own gift wrap

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The Artist's Way

The festive season is a great opportunity for artists to show off their creative side. If you're not convinced of your artistic skills, use your PC to kickstart professional looking designs. 

Templates and stencils

Download some birthday or festive season graphics from the Internet. Type “Free Images” followed by “Birthday” or a keyword that describes the recipient into a search engine.

(Remember to respect the rights of the copyright owner – if they don’t state on their website that you can download and use their images, then don’t.)

Once you’ve found some good images online, print off a bold or stylised graphic and stick it onto cardboard. Cut around it to create a template, or cut it out of the board to create a stencil.

Experiment with keeping inner sections of the image intact and joined to the edges for more detail.

Handmade stamps

Remember the potato stamps you used to make in junior school art class? If you prefer, you can use foam or polystyrene packing material. Cut a potato in half and draw around your template to make an indentation on the potato. Cut away the edges and use as a stamp.

Personalised giftwrap

Create your own personalised paper by composing a poem or, better still, an ode to the recipient (if you're not poetic, something as simple as 'Happy birthday to Joe, from Jane' is still very effective).

Type your poem and change the font to a cursive or handwriting style. Increase the font size to at least 50, so that your poem will be legible. Print and cut out the lettering to create a stencil.

Unroll a length of brown paper (or coloured paper) and stencil your poem continuously in gold or silver paint. Intersperse with a stamped or stencilled graphic.

You can even use fabric, such as satin, chiffon, or organza, for ultra-luxurious wrapping.

Funky ribbon

Raid your sewing kit for off-cuts of broad fabric ribbon. Use metallic acrylic or fabric paints to stamp or stencil small graphics onto the ribbon.

Have fun!

copyright © Elsa Neal 2005 (Please contact the for permission to reprint this article.)

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