First of all, happy Thanksgiving!

Second of all;

Brown paper packages tied up with strings? These are on the list of totally adorable holiday things! And it’s easy to make your own!

Sometimes it can be tough to find cute wrapping for homemade baked goods. It seems like the stores are flooded with cheap and gaudy plastic bags and you may not want to invest in a more substantial tin or the like. As a solution, may I humbly propose this simple tutorial! From start-to-finish I’ll describe how to make your own holiday gift or goody bag, but (if don’t have as much time on your hands as me and don’t want to construct paper bags from scratch) keep in mind that this is meant for inspiration and you can apply it to brown paper wrapped packages or store-bought paper bags too!

Materials:

– brown craft paper
– stamping ink
– alphabet stamps
– tape
– scissors
– baker’s twine

For each bag, I cut a rectangle from the brown craft paper that measured about 10″ x 11″. The final dimensions will be a 10″ tall bag with 3″ and 1.5″ sides. To achieve these dimensions I drew a line parallel with the long edge at 1″, 4″, 5.5″ and 8.5″.

I used the edge of my ruler to fold upward along each line, then the edge of my stamp (though anything firm would do) to press along each fold to make it nice and crisp.

Next, I made one fold perpendicular to these, along the 10″ edge, about an inch from the bottom (this will form the bottom of the bag).

From here I folded the paper up to form a long tube and secured the edge with tape (I put a little on the inside and the outside, for good measure).

Next I folded in the bottom of the bag the way I would when wrapping a present and secured the bottom with tape, both inside and out.

I filled my gift bags with delicious spiced candied almonds (recipe here).

They were a little greasy though, so I used one of my previously  mentioned gaudy plastic store bought gift bags to line my newly made cute and folksy brown paper bag.

I secured the inner plastic bag with a twist tie then rolled the brown paper bag down like a bag of coffee.

To add a nice personal touch I used an alphabet rubber stamp kit to decorate the outside of the package (I found it easier to do this after the bag was full so that I could properly position the writing. But you, or course, can do whatever you like).

Then, to make it an adorable brown paper package tied up with strings I tied the whole thing up using some red and white baker’s twine.

And there you have it – a new favorite totally adorable holiday thing!