gift wrap

Wrap your Father's Day gifts in personalized style! Emma Jeffery, our lovely visiting author from the blog Hello Beautiful shows us how to create gift bags with custom-printed Spoonflower gift wrap!

I haven’t yet thought about a Father’s Day gift for my husband or my dad, but I have thought a lot about the packaging I will wrap it in! For a truly meaningful gift giving experience, I made personalized gift bags from Spoonflower gift wrap. 

I used a photo collage of my children on one side of the bag, and a personalized greeting on the other. I designed my gift wrap so that the text and photos were positioned in the correct places to fold into a 9"x8" gift bag. The finished dimensions of my gift bags are: 9” wide, 3” deep and 8” tall. To make a different size gift bag you will need to change the position of your designs accordingly. I chose these measurements because you can fit six gift bag templates perfectly onto one roll of 26" x 72" Spoonflower gift wrap with zero waste!

I started by taking photos of my children and editing them into a collage using Picmonkey. I then opened a new file in a drawing program on my computer. I started by making the page the dimensions of one gift bag template: 26” x 12”. After selecting a background color, I imported the photo collage I had made. This is going on the left side of the screen, centered around the 4.5” mark (using the ruler at the top of the screen). I added text to the other side of the bag, leaving a 3” space in between for the side of the bag.

The black lines illustrate how I envisaged the bag layout and set out my designs accordingly. Pay attention to the ruler at the top of the screen in your drawing or photo editing program. This is your best friend when you want to make sure your photo or text are centrally and correctly positioned. Also keep in mind that the top and bottom 2” will be folded in and you should keep your text and photos away from those areas.

Once I was happy with the design, I saved it. I then created a new document and changed the page size to fit half a sheet of Spoonflower’s gift wrap; 26” x 36”. I imported my saved design into this new file. 

I created a couple of extra designs for upcoming family birthdays and repeated this design on Spoonflower to create 2 gift bags of each design. You could have 6 bags of one design or 6 individual designs– it’s up to you! To create the gift bags, cut each template away from the roll of printed gift wrap and fold the top and bottom edges 2” to the wrong side. 

I like to use a bone folder to ensure I get crisp, clean folds. Open up the folds.

Next, score the fold lines at 9”, 12”, 21” and 24”. Remember, the final two inches will be your flap for sticking the sides together.

Start to construct your gift bag. Put glue on the 2” end flap and adhere to the other side of the gift bag. Tuck the folded top edge inside the bag.

Fold the bottom edges as if you were wrapping a parcel. Put glue on the final flap and press down from inside the bag to secure.

Optional:  Cut a piece of cardstock (an old cereal box will do) 3” x 9” and place in the bottom of the bag for reinforcement.

To finish, measure and punch holes along the top edges and thread ribbon through, tied at the ends to secure the handles in place. For reference, my ribbons were cut 15” in length each.

Now all that’s left for me to do is find the perfect gift to put inside the bag!

About Our Guest Blogger

Hi! I'm Emma, and as well as working on the Fiskars Design Team, I blog over at hellobeautifulblog.blogspot.com/

I'm an obsessive sewer, often leaping into projects with more enthusiasm than talent, more bravado than skill and more good luck than anything else. This technique has worked well for me so far and more often than not, I make things I love, even if they're not absolutely perfect. And though I'm no expert, I have a passion for fabric, color and design. I know what I like and what I like makes me smile.