Last Minute Recycled Gift Bag

Finally a crafty post instead of a reconstruction one.

We got a last minute invitation to a birthday party for our friend's son. I managed to squeeze in some shopping time for a present, but when I looked through my stash, I had no wrapping paper or bags fit for a 6 year old. Most of my craft supplies, glues sticks, glues, etc. are all packed away in storage while we're doing our home renovation, so I couldn't make my usual upcycled gift bag. But if you save enough junk like I do, you can always find something usable. Another of my friends (who's received a few of my recycled calendar gift bags) now hands me down her calendars at the end of the year & I found one stashed in the bookshelf. I also had a Williams Senoma shopping bag. I just cut out 2 cute pages from the calendar & taped them on the bag. Since the sides of the bag said williams-senoma.com down them, I cut a strip of some used wrapping paper that said 'Happy Birthday' and taped over that too. Quick, easy & pretty cute to boot!

Variations on Recycled Calendar Gift Bags

We recently had a family party to celebrate 4 birthday’s. I needed gift bags for most of the presents. If you’re a follower of my blog, you know that I enjoy recycling wall calendars into gift bags. Every year I buy beautiful art and photo calendars for my walls. For years I have saved them for the pictures, as I sorted through them last week I was surprised to see how ancient some of them were.

I am constantly trying different methods for constructing them, some have held up better than others. I’m hoping to put together a tutorial, but as I’m always throwing thing together at the last minute, I don’t have pictures to include and I’m sure they’d be needed. Here are the latest bags I put together. 

This was the simplest; I needed a bag strong enough to hold a big book so I covered a cardboard box using calendar pages and slices from a magazine page that matched the prints.

I also needed a bag for the shag pillow; it needed to be wide to fit the pillow. A paper grocery bag fit the task, just folded down the top to the right height and covered it with a cute dog calendar and a piece of used birthday wrapping paper. I used my decorative edged scissors to cut a strip to add on top of the calendar page as it wasn’t quite tall enough.

The last one was for a lightweight object, so I just used the calendar pages, calendars with pages the weight of cardstock work best for bags. The pages weren’t quite wide enough, so I pieced in some white glossy paper and covered it with a magazine page too. For this bag I constructed the bottom out of a cereal box. On all the bags I used some braided yarn for the handles.

Photography Related Upcycled Giftwrap

Today is my husbands birthday & in honor of his great talent in photography, I wrapped his presents in that theme. I created a gift bag by recycling two pages from an old Ansel Adams wall calendar. Inside I added two pillow boxes recycled from pages in a photography book. I think he was wishing each of those antique cameras were in the bag.

Paper Goods and Recycling

I save everything, especially if I find it attractive. I have a huge stack of wall and desk calendar dating back years. So I began transforming them into gift bags. I first started making them for family gifts, but now have made a few for my shop. I look for two pages that coordinate nicely, usually from the same calendar, but not always necessary. If I have a gift I need a particular size bag for, then I work from there. When needed I add other pages, paper or cardboard to form the sides and bottom. Sometimes I just fold the calendar page over to form the sides. I tape them together and then look for ribbon, yarn, string or even twisted paper to form handles. I also collect a lot of old books, mostly from thrifting or garage sales. I turn them into lovely little pillow boxes. You can find instructions and patterns on the net for how to construct the boxes. I don’t use a set template, but size the boxes so that I can work a particular photo or illustration into the front of the boxes. I especially like the ones I made from “The Big Book of Pets”, I allowed the text from the story to wrap around the boxes. They can also be embellished with ribbon, buttons and other decorations. My sister-in-law and niece have made some lovely ones with embellishments. The lighter the weight of the pages, the less sturdy the box, so they need to be used for lighter gifts, or you need to reinforce them by double the thickness or adding cardboard.