Hello crafty people! Today’s cards were made with gift bags and wrapping paper I collected during the holidays. My family doesn’t really buy these at all; we usually wrap presents in brown paper and reuse gift bags since I don’t want to buy these. But the gift bag in question ripped, and so it seemed fortuitous that it would become part of a few cards, and the wrapping paper worked out as well. The only bummer is that the shiny silver wrapping paper does not photograph well.
This first card features the really pretty black and white gift bag. I die cut a piece of it with a stitched-rectangular die in my stash, and then die cut a matte layer of really colorful sparkly cardstock. The two layers were glued together. A new holiday sentiment die was used to die cut some gold glitter cardstock as well as two pieces of scrap cardstock.
All three layers of die cut sentiments were glued together to give the gold glitter cardstock a little dimension, and then were glued onto the gift bag panel. I aggressively splattered the panel with gold watercolor and then added some blue, red, and gold sequins onto the panel before gluing the whole thing onto an A2-sized white card base.
Card #2
This card was a little more complicated. I decided to use the side of the gift bag, and since it is much thinner than the front of the bag, I knew that I would need to add some other elements to the card. So I roughly ripped the right edge of the black gift bag and then added some green ink onto the edge by pressing the edge directly onto the ink pad before heat embossing the edge with Holographic embossing powder. I then roughly ripped the edge of a silver metallic piece of wrapping paper. This wouldn’t cover a whole die cut panel either, so I pulled out a black and white dotted piece of wide washi tape and added it to the right side of a piece of cardstock before gluing the silver wrapping paper over the middle part of the cardstock, making sure that it overlapped the tape, and then gluing the black and white snowflake gift bag panel over the silver wrapping paper. After giving the whole thing some time to dry, I die cut it with the same stitched-rectangular die. A green metallic piece of cardstock was die cut with a slightly larger die to make the green matte layer. Both panels were glued together.
The sentiment die came next, this time used to die cut two pieces of cardstock–more of the metallic green cardstock that was used for the matte layer, and gold glitter cardstock. Originally, I was going to have the green metallic cardstock peek out from behind the gold, but changed my mind and just glued the two layers directly on top of each other before gluing them onto the panel. Splatters of the green ink used to heat emboss the edge of the black gift bag mixed with water were added to the whole card panel, but you can really only see the splatters on the silver and white background.
To finish the card, a sequin mix with green, yellow and white star sequins were used to add a little extra color to the panel. The whole thing was glued onto an A2-sized white card base.
I hope that these cards inspire you to use some of the wrapping paper and other paper left over from the holidays on your projects!
Anna York is from Oregon, US. She has been writing for TPC since 2023. Anna started paper crafting in 2008, had a break while her kids were small and started cardmaking again in 2019. Anna mostly makes cards. Her paper projects are often made in sparkly, whimsical style and she loves colors.