Gift Wrap: Day 1

I have lined up five days of DIY gift wrap inspiration for you this week so can get gifting in time for the quickly approaching holiday. Since I had so many ideas I decided to organize them into categories by theme. So get ready, it's a lot – over 20 innovative wrapping ideas coming to you before the weekend hits. Today's theme is Wanderlust, targeted for the gift givers or receivers who desire travel, seek adventure, and embrace nature. Enjoy!

TRAVEL: After recently taking an amazing excursion to Italy, this beautiful travel paper immediately caught my eye on a visit to the craft store and was immediately purchased for a whopping $3.99. If you, or the lucky receiver of the gift, is planning an upcoming trip, being gifted with presents from overseas, or perhaps would just appreciate some beautiful paper, this wrapping is perfect for you.

The great thing about paper like this is that not each gift has to be completely covered in wrapping. As you can see below, it also looks just as beautiful incorporating select elements from the paper on top of a neutral paper. Using Kraft paper provides an affordable, neutral and durable base for you to add to. While I only wrapped 3 presents for this photo, I had more than half of my paper left and could have easily wrapped 6 or 7 more gifts. With Kraft paper going for $2 at my local drug store, that’s nearly 10 presents wrapped under $5. Affordable, beautiful, personal, creative...what more could you ask for from a gift wrap?!

NATURE: While again using a neutral colored paper as my base, I decided to use some old magazines I had around my home to get this simple, natural look. Using National Geographic magazines made it ridiculously easy for me to find beautiful nature images, which I just cut out and adhered to my base of Kraft paper using a glue stick. Old books, outdated encyclopedias, and magazines all provide access to a wide variety of beautiful imagery. While I cut square and rectangular images out for my examples, securing the cutouts in a collage-like manner would also look awesome. If you're in a time or financial crunch this year, this option allows you to creatively use what you already have, making that special gift a bit more special.

DISCOVERY: For this idea, I was envisioning I was wrapping a gift for someone who loved to pick flowers, take hikes and embrace nature. And as I write this, I’m realizing that person might be me, so I kind of wish I would have put a gift in the box before wrapping it up! But anyways, I found these beautiful floral prints in an old nature book and used them to wrap and accent these gift boxes. Some spare silk flowers I had were used on top of two of the gifts – one flower went into a little plastic bottle and the rest were used on top of one of the other gifts – secured with a drop of hot glue. But if you don’t have a mini plastic bottle (I admit that was a random find) or silk flowers, try clipping dried flowers to ribbon with a mini clothespin. In my opinion, sticking with neutral ribbon really completes the simplistic explorer-esque look.

ATLAS: If you don't happen to own any old maps, Atlas paper can be found at antique stores, garage sales, online. If you’re in NYC, the Antiques Garage in Chelsea and the Brooklyn Flea at 1 Hanson Place, both have a few vendors with old atlas maps. To complement the antiquated hues of the paper, I used an off-white twine, neutral-colored gift tags, and added a vintage ornament to the top of one of my gifts for a nice festive touch.