'Tis the most magical time of the year! 'Tis also the most expensive and over-commercialised time of the year. So if you'd like a little handmade goodness in your holidays, here's a simple method for producing your own gift wrap. All the supplies can be bought from the dollar store. You'll wrap all your gifts for a few bucks, and they'll look way classier than with cheesy store-bought wrap. Now, I'm not claiming to be a better gift-wrap-designer than the people workin' for the big stores, but I am claiming that all of you guys are. So prove me right! Get to it! Make beauty!

The most very basic supplies you need are: an eraser, an exacto knife, a pen, and a stamp pad. And paper of some kind to stamp onto. I used tissue paper from the dollar store, but you could use pretty much anything - brown kraft paper, printer paper, whatever you have lying around. 

If you are feeling fancy, you might also have a lino carving tool, or stamp pads in multiple colors. But you don't need it. You can do great stuff with just an exacto knife.

The next step is simple: draw your design onto the eraser. It doesnt have to be neat, and you can just draw over any mistakes - ain't nobody gonna see this. I was lucky enough to have a lino carving tool, which makes curves and detail a bit easier, but if you're just working with an exacto you may want to stick with a simpler design. Even something like a triangle or a simple angular shape will look awesome! 

Now you just gotta cut that design out. 

Once you've got all the detail you want, you're ready to start stamping. 

Do a few test stamps to make sure it looks how you want - you can always cut into the stamp more and change things that dont look right. If you're lucky, your stamp pad might have darker ink than mine. But hey, it's from the dollar store! So let's just tell ourselves that grey is chic. 

I made a couple more stamp designs, and then attacked my paper. I chose a teal tissue paper (also from the dollar store) and made a slightly randomized pattern. These stamps can of course also be used on gift tags (make those yourself too!), cards, envelopes, any-old-where. 

And there you have it. Some parcel string and a tag and these babies are all wrapped up and ready to gift. You can re-use the same stamp for all your gifts, or make custom wrapping for each person on your list. Enjoy, and happy holidays!