I seem to be on a real “crafting with book pages” fad at the moment! I have quite a stash of old damaged books that I use for all sorts of crafts anyway and I’ve recently been seeing new ways to use them all the time!

Because Christmas is fast approaching I’ve turned my attention to gift wrap ideas and have made some little book page gift bags for small but perfectly formed gifts this year.

This idea is a variation on the sheet music gift card envelopes that I made a few years ago. Just a little bigger and this time made with pages of an old damaged book and given a Christmas theme.

The size your gift bags will end up really depends on the size of the book you are using. You could easily glue or even sew several pages together to make bigger gift bags. (This idea is only occurring to me now as I write so I’ll be giving that idea a test soon and will let you know how it goes!)

I have bought small gifts for my nieces this year (I can’t say what yet as they may read this and I don’t want to spoil the surprise now Now that Christmas is past I can say they were little bracelets similar to these from Etsy!) so this was a great chance to make sweet little bags to pop their gifts in.

To make upcycled book page gift bags like this you will need:

• An old damaged book

• Scissors or a guillotine

• Stamps in Christmassy designs and Ink - I’ve had my stamps for years but I found these Christmas stamps which are similar

• A sewing machine and thread

• Alphabet stamps - for personalisation

• A hole punch

• Ribbon

How to make a book page gift bag:

Trim 2 pages to the size you want with scissors or the guillotine and then sew around 3 sides leaving the top open.

I always start and finish with a few back stitches just to make sure the stitches don’t start unravelling.

Next stamp a design on the bag, I did just one or two but you can cover the whole thing if that takes your fancy. I also stamped the name of the recipient using my alphabet stamps. You could write them if you don’t have stamps.

Take the hole punch and punch two holes at the top of the bag.

Pop the gift in and then seal the bag by threading a length of ribbon through the holes and tying in a bow.

Sorted! How easy was that? This is a great and simple way to use old damaged books for something new. It’s a good use for using those ribbons that come on new clothes that you have to trim off so they don’t stick out at your neck or armhole at an inopportune moment!

Once you get a production line going it’s really quick to make a whole load of these little gift bags.

I made some extra bags and tried using a silver ink pad and some embossing powder. I’ve not used my embossing powder for AGES! I’d forgotten how much fun it is when the magic happens and it turns to shiny.

Julie

I’ll be sharing this idea at these link ups

If you like crafting with old books you might like to check out some of these ideas too: