{Featured Guest} Michelle from Its a Handmade Life....

Michelle is here today from Its a Handmade Life. This girl is so cool and her ideas are amazing! 

So lets all find a comfy chair (in my case I need to remove three piles of clean laundry to sit down) and see what this chicka is going to surprise us with today!

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Hi there...my name's Michelle. And I come from a little far away blog called

 It's a Handmade Life. I'm a wifey and a mommy to a pretty, pretty princess. Around here, it really is a handmade life. It's just funner that way, isn't it?

Stop by my blog and take a looksy! I'm really itching to start giveaways!

Where do I start?!?!  I love to save MONEY and I love to be cReAtIvE. I'm gonna jump out on a limb here and guess that you like to save money and be creative too. To the typical person, a simple gift bag from the store is just fine. But you and I are a different kind, my dear! We are not satisfied with boring! We want unique!

So let's have some fun!  

The first order of business: embellish!! I try not to buy wrapping paper, but when I do, I buy the cheap solid colored ones. That way I get to have all the fun I want with it. You can seriously glue/tape ANYTHING to a gift to spruce it up.

Wrap and embellish with paper flowers!

OR

Pinwheel Rosettes

paper doilies

I love putting a picture of myself and the gift-ee!

(yes thats me and my hunk-a-man!)

Ok, quick confession: I throw cards away. Especially the bazillion Christmas cards I get. I know it's absolutely terrible and thoughtless. But I throw everything away. I hate keeping stuff that's not useful. The exceptions are handmade cards or if something very meaningful was written in it. So with that, before I throw cards away, I cut off any cute little embellishments it has...ha! Hence why I have a little felt reindeer for this gift. I yanked him off a card last Christmas before I chucked it. So if you are like me, make sure you recycle any embellishments you can and reuse them!!

You can make a beautiful gift bag from a grocery paper bag:

Tutorial Here!

This kind of gift bag is PERFECT for the green person in your life!!

How about some fabric?

You can make all kinds of fabric flowers Don't go out and buy fabric! This grey one I made from an old sweater! Feels good to reuse and repurpose!

tip: glue pins on the backs of the flowers and make them reusable to the gift-ee!

Or some Japanese Furoshiki!

Tutorial Here!!

Wrap some pretty lace around and attach a tag:

Have some solid, plain, boring bags?

How about hanging an old ornament you don't want anymore?

I wrote to and from on the actual ornament...no tag needed!

The tag hanging on this bag was blank. I quickly spruced it up by stamping "Hope" on it.

This is another ornament I had laying around...so cute...but it doesn't match my perfectly coordinated tree darn it! It's ok! It makes my gift look beautimus! I just printed the tag and punched it out with a scallop punch.  

Here I just glued an old snowflake ornament I had laying around. You can find these at the Dollar Store :) 

Have a teeny-tiny gift or gift card to wrap?

How about this baby! Made from a toilet paper roll!

Tutorial Here!

So! No more buying those $4 gift bags anymore! What a rip-off!!! Sometimes we pay so much care to the actual gift, why not the wrapping to?!?! Remember, choose styles and colors according to what you think that person would love to make it even more special for them!

Happy wrapping!!

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Aren't Michelle's ideas thrifty?! I love these presents and I can't wait to wrap my own.

Let's all thank Michelle for stopping by and to show our gratitude head on over to her cute blog and give her some love!