What I did for presents was fill the bags with CFL bulbs, a certificate for a donation made in their honor to the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and homemade bath salts with sea salt, epsom salts, baking soda, and essential oils, and put them in glass Ball caning jars.

All together the presents were something that everybody could use again and again, and they also helped to make a difference in the community. And my family loved it!

http://www.furoshiki.com/techniques.php

I’ve been using fabric scraps and japanese wrapping techniques for years.

The fabric can definitely be used again. I started with kids gifts and I was using silk scarves that got added to the dress ups (I found the silk scarves at the thrift shop)

one thing though – i like to re-use things (i.e. old calendars) instead of wrapping paper. often the calendar sheets are not large enough so i tape together a couple (it makes an interesting pattern if they are from the same calendar.

i like that i can avoid wrapping paper altogether and re-purpose an item that would normally be trash. this does mean use of tape. any ideas how else to do this without tape? (and gift bags are a good idea too, but sometimes i do like to “wrap” gifts).

one thing i like doing is putting the gift in the center of a piece of paper and then gathering the paper around the gift and tying it with ribbon in one or two places (think peppermint candy or the ridiculous “gift basket” plastic wrapping, only nicer).

Easy to make and they fold flat for storage ..

For those with special needs kids (the original reason I did this) they do not tend to set off bi-polar, ODD/CD, ADHD kids as much as paper .. Perhaps because it looks like grocery bags (colourful but still similar), maybe its the lack of sound, or the reflections from the lights .. whatever it helped make presents less traumatic

ria