Gift Wrapping on a Budget: My Dollar Tree Hack to Unique-Looking Presents!
We’re nearing peak summer time and birthdays are rolling in! These next few weeks I’ve got a few birthdays coming up, so I made my usual trip to Dollar Tree to get the gift wrapping I need for the presents I purchased.
This time I decided to go a little extra with gift wrapping especially since I had two important birthdays coming for some girlfriends of mine. Normally I’ll grab a few birthday gift bags and some decorative tissue paper, but I ventured out a bit and wanted to try something a little different.
Dollar Tree Gift Wrapping Inspiration
My inspiration stemmed from these two unique gift boxes that were the perfect size for the gifts I was going to fill them with. I didn’t want to use the standard tissue paper I usually resort to – because that would be too boring and overrated ;).
I went with a floral approach because Dollar Tree has a good selection of faux flowers in so many colors and styles to choose from. They’ve also got green Styrofoam (in many styles) for placing the flowers in. Since these gift box/bags were fairly deep, I had space to place some Styrofoam at the bottom of the bags and I’d still have enough room for their gifts. All of the materials used to make these gift boxes can be purchased from your nearest Dollar Tree store.
I first started my project by replacing the gift box handle with some pink ribbon I also purchased from Dollar Tree. I went with a 18 ft roll of pink ribbon. I cut them into three long pieces (roughly 3 ft each in length). I looped one end into one of the holes, tied it into a knot, then braided the three strips until the end. I looped the finishing end on the other hole and knotted it to secure the new handle. The reason I did this was because I wanted a longer handle since the flowers were tall (check the photo below to see my loosely braided gift bag handle).
I saw these really pretty wisteria faux flowers and I knew I had to put them to use! I grabbed a few of the purple ones and some pink/red one as well (as I was decorating two gift bags). Then I selected flowers that would compliment each of the colored faux wisterias. I chose purple and blue hues for the purple and pink/purple/yellow hues of flowers to go with the reddish wisterias.
To get the flowers to really stick in the Styrofoam squares, I bend the ends of the flower stems into an acute V shape, then stick them at a desired angle. The Styrofoam from Dollar Tree come in a pack of four small rectangles.
They’re the perfect size and fit well into the cardboard gift boxes. I needed all four per box so that they stayed pretty smug at the bottom of the box.
You’ll need to be careful not to apply a lot of pressure on the wisteria faux flowers as they made of small colored Styrofoam beads and if you squeeze them too much, you’ll get Styrofoam balls all over your working space! Gently place them into the green square and separate the stems and bend them as needed. I wanted them spread out across one side of the bags.
When placing the rest of the flowers, I made sure to stick them in on one end nearest the side with the hanging wisteria. This’ll imbalance the bag when you hold it up, but once I placed the gifts in, it evened itself out.
And here are the finished products! What do you think? Not bad for a Dollar Tree haul! Overall, each gift bag cost me $8-$10 total. A regular, plain colored cardboard box will cost around that much, if not more, at a convenience or craft store. I just showed you how to make a much more unique and chic one for the same price (or less)!
To summarize . . .
Here are the items I purchased from Dollar Tree to make these (per bag):
- 1 Cardboard gift box/bag (you can find these next to the regular gift bags, probably on a shelf)
- 2 Wisteria faux flower batches
- 3 assorted faux flower batches of your choice
- 1 Pack of 4 green Styrofoam rectangles
- 1 Roll of Satin Ribbon in any color
And that’s it, hope you enjoyed my Dollar Tree gift wrapping idea! OH and of course – don’t forget to get a thoughtful gift card!
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