#PinItDoIt - Creative Gift Wrapping by Make Thrift Love Life

I am delighted to write a guest post for Bex at The Olive Dragonfly while she's away enjoying a fabulous holiday in Thailand... lucky thing!  My blog is Make Thrift Love Life - a frugal, creative lifestyle blog about living the good life on a budget. 

I love the idea of #pindoit, as I have so many wonderful projects marked on Pinterest, and never get round to doing them.  As luck would have it, this is a busy gift-giving time for me so I chose to try a series of pins on creative gift-wrapping ideas. 

My beautifully-wrapped offerings!

Wrapping a gift thoughtfully can instantly add luxury, giving the "wow" factor to the smallest of presents. You needn't spend much money either- these wrapping methods actually cost less than buying gift bags and fancy wrapping paper.  For my #pindoit projects, I used brown parcel paper, costing only 50p for 3 metres, bits and bobs from my craft stash and recycled materials.

Just 50p in Morrisons!

Bunting-inspired gift wrap

All you need for this gorgeous wrapping is a piece of twine and a few pieces of patterned paper or card.  I cut these bunting flags from a label on packaging, which was otherwise being thrown away.  

See this project on Pinterest

Button and embroidery thread

This design is ridiculously easy, yet absolutely striking!  All you need is a funky button and some embroidery thread.  Thread the long side first, then the short side and tie in a bow.  You could jazz it up even more by adding more buttons along the thread.

I think I'll use this a lot!

Weaving Pattern

This one is actually my favourite visually, but definitely the most time-consuming.  It was difficult to get the threads to line up uniformly, but doesn't it look great?  I would take the time to do this for a very special gift. 

Simple weaving pattern

Sweet book page package 

Deviating from the "brown paper" theme, I fell in love with this cute package made from book pages!  I happen to have an old, scrappy copy of Little Women that I use for lots of crafts, so this cost nothing again. It was also very easy to do (I simply glued round all the edges, added a paper rose cut from wrapping paper and tied it with twine).  Beautiful! 

See the original on Pinterest

Lovely lace

If you have scraps of haberdashery trimmings lying around, you can really dress up a parcel with them.  I have lots of lace offcuts as I made bridal garters for a friend to sell in her lingerie store.  Tiny ribbon offcuts can be picked up very cheaply and finish off the presentation of a gift beautifully. 

My Pinterest inspiration

I hope you enjoyed reading my guest post, and are inspired to go and #pindoit! You can read more about my thrifty tips and crafty projects at Make Thrift Love Life, or on Bloglovin'.