Christmas gift bag tutorial

Are you feeling all festive? I've nearly finished my Christmas shopping! Just waiting for a few more bits and bobs to arrive in the post (thank you internet shopping!).

When it comes to wrapping up presents I always want them to look a little bit special. I've created this Christmas gift bag tutorial to help you make your presents look lovely too.

Start with a flat piece of wrapping paper. Fold the sides and top in about 1cm and glue.

Fold the sides in so that they meet in the middle. Secure with tape on the plain side of the paper, so that the tape can't be seen on the patterned side.

It should look like this.

Fold the bottom up about half as many centimetres as you want the base of the gift bag to be.

Then flatten the sides into triangle shapes like so.

Squash them down both sides so they're completely flat.

Fold the very bottom of the paper up to the middle of the triangles, do the same with the top of the flattened section.

Tape it down neatly.

Fold the right and left sides in to meet the points of the triangles created by the last folds.

Now open the bag out. It should be beginning to take shape.

You will need to inverse some of the creases to make it into a hollow box shape.

Push in the sides, fold in the bottom and flatten. This can be a bit tricky so just take it slowly.

Open out again and stand up. Cut a piece of card the size of the base and pop it in for a bit of added strength.

Now for the handles. Cut a narrow strip of paper, about 4cm wide and about as long as the width of the wrapping paper. Fold it in half all the way down the centre. It really helps if the pattern has stripes of some kind!

Now fold both sides of the strip inwards to meet the middle crease.

Fold in half again and glue together to form a narrow strip.

Cut the strip in half. It doesn't matter too much how long the two strips are as it will just make longer or shorter handles.

Fold the ends of each strip at right angles.

Stick to a strip of wrapping paper. As you can see, it doesn't matter if one side is longer than the other as it will be hidden.

Glue each handle to the inside of the bag.

And there you go! Don't they look pretty?

I've added a little origami bow to mine which I found on Pinterest. There's a fantastic tutorial for it here.

Good luck with your wrapping!

Merry Christmas everybody!

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Today I'm linking to the following blogs: Handmade Harbour, Knotted Cotton, Manon Popje's Illustrations, Be Different Act Normal and Tatertots and Jello.