I am not very good at wrapping gifts. I always seem to cut too much paper, or worse, not enough. My corners get all wrinkled as I’m folding them down, and somehow the tape always gets stuck to my fingers. This is why I am a big advocate of The Gift Bag. Big or small, round or square, the gift bag solves all kinds of gift-wrapping dilemmas, especially for people like me. I can shove almost anything in a gift bag, throw some tissue paper on top, and the end result will end up looking pretty nice.

Also: I am a frequent gift-bag reuser. I believe as long as a former recipient’s name isn’t inscribed on any kind of tiny matching card that it is an acceptable practice.

There are, however, times that I have a tiny present to give and no appropriate bag to be found anywhere in my household. Let’s say I have a small holiday gift to give and I only have a giant “WELCOME BABY” bag on hand. See the problem? It will look totally stupid. And sometimes I don’t want to jump in the car and rush to the store to pay through the nose for something that costs 30 cents to make.

That’s why it’s good to know how to make Small Gift Bags for Small Things. This little trick has saved the day on several occasions, and it’s easy enough for kids to do too.

All you need is:

• a magazine (just make sure the kids know that you must have read it first)
• scissors or an x-acto knife
• clear tape

Grab the magazine and slice out a full page. I went with an old Canadian Geographic, but anything will do. (Old art, photography, and graphic design magazines are perfect for this kind of thing.)

Fold page in half as shown below:

Cut out the corners as shown. Tape the very bottom long edge as well as the one open side.

Turn it upside down and gently poof it out with your hand. Finish the bottom of the bag by carefully taping up the openings that were created when you cut the corners.

You will have to do a bit of folding to get the sides right. Try to shape it like the brown lunch bags of days gone by, so keep that in mind as you go.  It should end up looking like this:

And there you have it! A tiny bag of your very own! You can use it to package up a million little tiny things. We’ve used them to transport pretty Christmas decorations bought as thank you gifts, tiny toys and trinkets for a little friend’s birthday, candies for neighbors… the possibilities are endless. Let us know if you try it out!