Gift bags - https://www.plymouthcards.com/collections/clear-card-sleeves-bags

Hey friends, how are you today? Lisa here at Plymouth Cards, and yes, we are busy packing lots of orders for everyone, getting them shipped out. We just did a big shipment today. So I'm here I want to get on and chat with you about fun different ways to wrap a gift if you find yourself without wrapping paper. You know, sometimes you're in a pinch, and you realize you don't have wrapping paper, and you don't have time to get to the store to get that wrapping paper. So I thought I would show you today, some different ways that you can wrap presents. Maybe you've thought of some of them, maybe you haven't, without having to go to the store, and just things that you already have in your house. So that's what I'm here to show you today.

Of course, we do have gift bags, if you planned ahead, and I will highlight some of those as we go through nut I just wanted to give you some fun ways of wrapping. They're just different -- maybe they're not different but I find them to be different. Some of them are unique or they'll touch people's hearts with the creativity. So let's see, what should I start with? What should I start with?

Everyone, I'm sure knows the usual, just a brown bag. You don't have anything in your house. So you're like, mmm, I'll use just a plain, you know, this is a lunch one. I should have been prepared with this. Hopefully that wasn't -- I'm trying to make it so it's not loud, I'm not... So you could just take a card collection and put it right into a lunch bag and it fits perfectly in there. But look at it, it's kind of boring, right. You have a few extra minutes, so I'm going to show you what you can do in those few extra minutes to jazz up the lunch bag. And I will post a link to a really cute website that I found that has some nice ideas as well. So one thing you can do is check this out. Make it look like Christmas lights, all you need is some paint like this. Just these little paints, pick them up at Michael's, Walmart, [inaudible 02:30] Fabrics, you don't have to go crazy. Sometimes they have little assortments or they put them on sale for 50 cents a little bottle. So that's something that you could do. And then you could have your kids or if you have grandkids, you could have them do that, the babysitter could do this activity with your kids. So then you could have some of these on hand. So I just made this, I don't have little kids or grandkids. So I did this myself, I apologize. I'm not the artist, but I just took different color paints, and made it into little Christmas lights. And I took some ribbon and a tag that I had and made it, so now it looks festive. 

Another thing that you could do, there's these really cool websites that show you all kinds of things that you can do with fingerprints, which is just pretty amazing. Look at this one reindeer, you can see different reindeer, some are Rudolph with the red and some are not. So there's that. So those are really cute also. And just draw -- you do not have to be an artist, please don't think you have to be an artist. I think it's more of the thought that counts on this than anything. So there's that. So check it out. So this is just a fun, creative way to get some -- just making a brown bag, a plain bag, into this. 

So I wanted to show you seriously how easy this is. So I have a brown bag right here. Okay, it's plain. I'm going to show you, here's a Sharpie. I'm not doing a magic trick, I promise. Can you see where I'm at? Okay, yeah, now you can see me. Alright. So I just, I again, I told you I'm not an artist in any way, shape or form, but just draw a line and then draw. Oops. I have a very thick Sharpie for some reason, I don't know why I just didn't get a regular one. But kind of just make it look like a tree. I know it looks like a stick figure right now, it probably should be thicker at the bottom. But just draw some branches. They don't have to be equal. And then I'm just sketching, now it looks like a coat rack. So now what I'm going to do is I have my the brown bag that I've been using to hold my paint and I'm just going to put some paint on it. And it doesn't take very long for this paint to dry, which is really cool. So I'm just going to show you, this just looks like a stick figure maybe, I don't know what you guys think it is. Let me know what you think. And then I'm just going to take -- it's much more fun to do this with little ones. I know when my kids were in elementary school, we would spend a lot of time making wrapping paper at this time of year. And then you just take your finger print and put it on the tree. And that's what we're making, we're making a tree, and these are the branches. And then when we're done, you could take a Q tip, you could take anything you have, I guess I should have made them -- and looking at this now I'm saying oh, I should make it thicker or more plentiful, it looks a little sparse. So I'm going to add some more branches to my tree. But this is a perfect activity to do with the kids this time of year, especially when you're in a pinch, you don't have any wrapping paper and they love to help. So do with your kids, your grandkids, set it up for your babysitter to do when she's watching your kids. It'll make everybody happy to have something to do and the kids will be so proud to share it with you. So I just wanted to show you that. Alright, so there's that. I'm going to let it dry for a few minutes. And I'll get back to that. But I just wanted to show you. So this is the reindeer, and I will post a link to this really cool website that I found when I'm done with this. I'll put it in the comments. 

And if you have any questions or any other great ideas on ways to wrap Christmas presents in a pinch, let me know. It doesn't have to be Christmas presents just any presents. So I'm going to go through some more ideas that I had just, you know, from personal experience or my family's personal experience. So yeah, that's  what I'm going to do right now. And then of course, we have gift bags and gift tags. And I'll scroll through some of those as we talk, just in case you wanted to check anything out.

Okay, so I talked about the lunch bags, and we're letting that one dry. Oh, okay. Tin foil, this is one of my sister's signature things. My kids growing up knew the gift was from Auntie Toby, the one in tin foil. They knew it. And it's so easy to use. You just have to -- I love tin foil wrapping because you just pull it, it's so easy, like that right? But the really cool thing is, okay, wait sidebar question. Anyone that cooks here bakes. Which side is supposed to face up when you put this in the oven? Is it supposed to be the shiny side? Is the shiny side or the dull side supposed to be on the food when you cook in an oven? That's an question we had Thanksgiving that we just couldn't answer. So if you know the answer, I'd love to find out. 

I apologize for the noise. So tinfoil it's so easy because you don't need any tape. It's just scrunches. I'm not making it look as nice as my sister does but it just -- look at that. Then all you have to do is grab a gift tag and a little piece of tape to put it on. And it's done. And your kids honestly, or anyone in your family is not going to be judging you on your gift wrapping abilities. Oh sure. They'll say ooh, it's so beautiful if it's beautifully wrapped, but they're not going to judge you or not want the gift because you use tin foil. So I like it because you really don't need any tapes or glue or anything. And it just looks so cute. Just like that. So let me know what you think about that. And if you have any other ideas, I'd love to know. 

So if you're just joining welcome. I'm Lisa here at Plymouth Cards and I'm just talking about ways that you can wrap a gift in a pinch when you found yourself without a gift bag, without wrapping paper. I know we've all been in that position. So I'm just trying to make it easy, so you don't feel that stress that you need to get to the store and the store is 20 minutes away and you know then you have to park and all that. So I just thought I'd do something fun like this to chat. Because I have definitely been in that position where I just put it in a grocery store bag. And my kids have never been upset about that. 

So I'm working on this finger painting/ fingerprinting one or finger print one, and that one is still drying. So while that's drying, I did want show you. This is not my most favourite one, it's parchment paper. The problem with parchment paper, is it's really meant for things not to stick to it. So when you tried -- I was testing it this afternoon, before I got on to make sure, the the tape doesn't stick to it. Look! I held it the wrong way so you can't see. Like this is heavy duty packing tape and I can't even get that to stick. So parchment paper is only a good option, if you have ribbon or twine to hold it all together, which is something that I have. So that's what I was able to do. But you can see that I was just using parchment paper and the twine that I had with a cute little tag. So that is a way like, if you're in a serious pinch do that, but don't expect the tape to stick to it. You know, it's funny, I thought, oh parchment paper, that'd be a perfect thing to wrap a gift in, but not really, because the tape doesn't stick to it. Yeah, I guess you could use rubber bands too. And I do have a rubber band little thing in a minute to show you. So there's that. 

So so far, I've talked about the usual. You can use newspaper or a big grocery store bag, I'm showing you how to use fingerprint art, which is really fun, and it would be great with all your kids and your grandkids. And if you have any other ideas, let me know. 

Okay, so let me show you. So you're giving the person this gift, you're giving them a flour sack towel, and you're doing a baking theme. Okay, so I've got my pan that you're going to give them and then you thought, oh, I'll give them a flour sack towel too. So flour sack towels are typically really big. So what you can do and is if it has a design on it, keep in mind where the design is when you're doing the wrapping. Because you want that to be shown somewhere. So what I'm going to do is I'm just literally going to wrap this pan into my flour sack towel, keeping in mind to keep the pattern some of it in -- I keep going the wrong way with the camera, I apologize. You'd think this was my first time getting on, on live. So now look at it, it's all wrapped up. Now you're like, what do I do? I don't know what to do, how do I keep it all together, I don't have any ribbon. Well, I want you to go into your junk drawer because I know everybody has a junk drawer, get a piece of cardboard. And then I'm just going to cut, probably not very straight but it doesn't matter. Cut a tag, something like this. I got to punch a hole in it. Again, this is just in a pinch, this isn't you know, five star packaging. It's just, it works in. And that's all that really matters. So now I've put the elastic through the tag. And then I'm going to take this rubber band and put it around. I'm going to hold the tag so that it's in the front. And I'm just going to put this rubber band around. I'm not doing this very, very nicely at this moment. But here, you can see my struggle. But yeah, and now it's all wrapped. It's in a pinch. We're just doing in a pinch wrapping. We're not doing Tiffany level packaging. So there's that today, but I think it's fine. No one is judging you. Don't put so much stress on yourself to be perfect and make everything perfect. They just want to see you and be with you. Enough of my lecturing I guess. Okay. So there's that. This is still drying. I'll go back to that. 

Okay. This is another like crazy one. Totally off the off the rails here with this one. But okay, you have something like this. This is one of our photo stands. How the heck am I going to wrap this, I don't have a box, it doesn't fit into bags that I want to use. So I came up with -- I was reading in our kitchen yesterday looking for all these ideas. And what I came up with is both bowls, right? You don't know what else but check this out. So my poor family, as I come up with these crazy wacky ideas, so but I think this is perfect, so you can just staple it, four sides and then there. I think you will win most creative packaging at your party. If you do this. Look, it looks like a little spaceship. And if you wanted to, you could do some of the finger paint art right on this to jazz it up. So let me know what you think about that. 

What else have you done? You know, feel free to comment, say hi. I can actually see comments today I fixed my problem, so I'm able to see comments. And I'd love for you to say hi, let me know where you're watching from. I am here in Plant City, Florida for those of you who are first time watchers and joining. So originally, we're from Boston, but we decided to escape winter a few years ago and here we are. So okay, what else was I going to say? Let me know where you're from. And I would love, love, love to know your hacks, gift wrapping hacks, like last minute things, and I would love to feature it. And I will obviously give you credit. I'm not here to steal anyone's limelight. But I think that's just so fun and look, I guess I can just put a fingerprint on it, and then I could, I don't know if you can see what I'm doing. I lost my napkin. Oh, there's my napkin. Now I can just draw, so you can just see how you draw. 

So to do a reindeer is so easy. You just do one fingerprint, draw a couple of antlers. Just like that. And then I have a tiny paintbrush, but if you don't have a tiny paintbrush, Q tips are perfectly fine if you have those. And I put a little red right here. And that's Rudolph. If you want Rudolph to have eyes, that's simple, too. I just use my -- I ran out a white paint. So I'm improvising and I'm using tan paint, which is just as good. Just being flexible here. And there you go. And now, you know, it looks like a -- And I'm okay with that. But I just wanted to show you some. The kids will really enjoy this. So I highly encourage you to go get a couple bottles of paint at Michael's, Walmart, Joann Fabrics, I'm trying to think. Those are the stores that I usually go to I'm sure there's another craft store that I'm forgetting and just pick up these little bottles of  paint. You can typically get them on sale for like 50 cents, definitely under a $1. If you pay over $1 that's not a good price. And maybe the Dollar Store has them too, I'm not sure. And if you really wanted to get crazy, you could get just a couple of colors, and then let the kids mix and match and make their own. So I think that's a really cool thing. 

So now I wanted to keep going on to my little [inaudible 18:08], so this is what you can do. So I showed you this one for the kids to do, to make the little reindeer, I'll hold it up close. Do you see it? Alright, and then I just drew this for the tree. Hopefully you saw that.  Now it's a good amount of dry. So now I'm just going to take it in and now you can put little bulbs on all over the place. And I would suggest doing one color first and then you know switching brushes, and then do the next color. And that will be your Christmas lights. And I'm telling you, your kids are going to love this. It's just such a fun activity to do this time of year, they're getting an antsy, they want to help, they want to be part of it. 

And oh my gosh, when my, I still remember collecting grocery bags, probably the brown bags, probably six months, cutting them all up. And then we lay them -- I know I probably sound like a crazy person, but we laid them on the floor. And I gave so many to each of my kids and they just had so much fun putting their hand prints, drawing, doing whatever. And then we actually used those brown bags to wrap the all our Christmas gifts that entire year. And the kids were so proud of it too. They're so excited like giving them to my parents and grandparents, you know, their aunts and stuff that they you know, had made this wrapping paper. So I think it's good to have them be involved. Now I'm just going to show you real quick, I'm just wiping this brush off. And so you can see I don't have as many colors as I would like, but it gives you an idea of what you can do. Just in a pinch or in an afternoon with the kids. So where are your grandkids and like I said, leave it for your babysitter if you're going crazy. And then you can put, I don't know, you can put something at the top of not a very good artist. So I'm going to try to fake it, but look at it. This is my first grade drawing for the day, but you get the idea what I'm just trying to show. It started out as a brown bag. And now it looks like a little fun Christmas tree. Now you can use this to wrap something.

And honestly, the pride they get when they are the ones that were responsible for making the gift wrap is amazing, it builds -- they just light up. So I strongly encourage you to do that. And let's see. So I showed you the flour sack towel wrapping, I've showed you finger paint art. If you're just joining now, I found this cool website, that I will put the link in the comments so that you can go see all kinds of fingerprints, or you can google yourself as well. But I found this one that she had all kinds of fun Christmas ones. And I don't want to I'm not stealing her credit at all. These are her ideas. So I wanted to give her credit for that. So I'll post that. I told you about parchment paper, which is like not the best one to use by any stretch because you can't use tape on it. So if you're going to use parchment paper, make sure you have rubber bands, or twine or some kind of ribbon to hold it all together or it's not going to work. Tinfoil is my favorite because it you don't need any tape. You can just take a gift tag and put it right here. I'll add our gift tag, so you can see. Just stick it on, I used a little piece of tape to hold it on, but that's so easy. So there's that. Do you have any other ideas? I would love to know. Oh yeah, so here's another finger paint one that just looks like Christmas tree lights, and we just put some ribbon and a little tag, held it all together. It's perfect. So that's that's some of my ideas. 

I would really love -- you know, as we've been chatting I've been posting, we do have -- Oh, thank you for the like I so appreciate you being here. I didn't see who did it but I appreciate it. And what was I going to say?  We do have a bunch of gift bags, if you have time. All our gift bags are made in the US. They're all made from recycled paper. I'm just going to go through them all right there. Hopefully you got to see them all, there $1.79 with a piece of tissue paper, and a coordinating gift tag or $2.29 for the medium size. And again, they both come with tissue paper and a coordinating gift tag. And if you wanted to do some art with a real gift bag, I'm getting out of the frame again. There we go. This one you know if you have some of these at home, that just have this handle already in their pristine craft, you're like oh, that's not very Christmassy you can make it a Christmassy with the finger paint that I showed you. So I think that would be perfect. So those are some really great ideas that you can do that are simple and easy, and don't take a lot of time. Or you can take as much or as little time as you want with them. So there's that.

Let's see. I should just mention real quick, we are doing our -- we've never done this before, we're doing a flash clearance sale on the 2021 Clarence, who's our signature ornament. Every year he encapsulates what's going on in the world. So right now it's buy two get one free with the code flash F L A S H. F as in Frank, B as in boy. Yeah. And then if you buy two, the third one is free. You can mix and match the scarf colors to go with everything. But I just wanted to mention that real quick. That sale ends, today is Saturday. Let me see February -- Where did that even come from? December 4th. So it ends tomorrow, Sunday, December 5th at the end of the day, midnight, tomorrow night. So I wanted to just mention that, in case that's interesting to you. And we do we have so many gift bags but I really just wanted to get on today and just show you that there's so many different ways that you can wrap a present other than just traditional gift bags gift wrap, which I'm really bad about. Oh I should show you this one too. If you have a packaging box, you know if you have one of our boxes that you got an order from or an Amazon box or a post office box, and you don't have enough paper to wrap a whole box because that takes a lot of paper a big box like this, you can make your own fun little belly band. I just used one of those grocery store bags, I should show you right here. This is what a belly band is. It's just a thin strip of paper and I cut it so that it fits around my box as so. And then I just put a gift tag on it. If you're artistic, which I am not, you could draw on this belly band or just do that finger pain art that I just showed you, have the kids do that, put a tag on it, boom, you're done. They're not going to judge you. I know I keep saying that. But they're really not. In my family, a lot of times, it's just, we just put it in the bag that came in or similar bag, and it's fine. It's more fun just pulling it out of the bag than actually what the outside looks like. Of course, the outside does, if you have the skill or you keep a plentiful supply of wrapping paper, that's great. But sometimes you run out. 

So let me know your thoughts. I'd love to know what you've used in a pinch to wrap something. So I've talked about, let me see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 different things that you can use. But I'm sure I'm missing something and I'd love to know. Oh, actually, I have one more that I totally forgot about. So I showed you the bowl but also you could use paper plates. You have some paper plates, if it's something thinner. If you have Christmas plates, you could do that, you could use those. So when they open it up, it'd be Christmassy inside, I don't have any of those. I just happen to find these two little random ones. But you could use plates, varying sizes. But also, if you have something that's big, you could go and get -- I found one of these in our closet of randomness. But you have a big gift, you could use one of these tablecloths at the dollar store. They're $1 or maybe they're $1.25 now at the dollar store. But you know, that is so much less expensive than buying a whole roll of wrapping paper to wrap this big thing. So there's that. 

But let's see, we are I think I already said Plymouth Cards. Just so you can see us a little bit better in case you're new here. Everything we have it's made in the US. It's eco-friendly if that's a possibility. All our pewter ornaments are made by my brother-in-law, Allen and Massachusetts. All our pewter products I should say because we have key chains, ornaments, and pins. I don't even have a pin on right now, which is kind of crazy. So he makes all that, I get wine bottle ornaments. Maybe I should just show you a couple of things so you know what I'm talking about. Let me pull them off our little tree here so you can see.

Okay, where's a wine bottle ornament? Why don't I have a wine bottle ornament? Here's one. Okay. Alright. 

Okay, so just so you know real quick. I will post links if you're interested after I'm done because I didn't put these in the little notes. But these are our wine bottle ornaments. She uses the bottom, she recycles wine bottles, the bottoms and hand paints them. They're amazing. And we have 15 different of her designs. She's in West Virginia. She's amazing. Really nice paintings. Each one is different because they are handmade, every single one. So pretty much I think we're out of one of the wine bottle designs. We have our pewter ornaments, we have our positivity line. We have believe, peace, hope, blessed they're all solid pewter. Allen does an amazing job with pewter for me -- not just for me for everyone he works with, but there's those. Those are all on our website too. Those are $11.99 and we have key chains as well as pins, they're all $11.99.

And what else do I have for you? What else was I going to say? What else do we have? 

Oh, we just got a new shipment of all of our state ornaments. They're wooden with a heart in the middle and we have all 50 states and Washington, DC. So you can see those two, were fully stocked on all those. So if that's something you need for your last minute gift giving, we are shipping right now. We are like, killing it, if I do say so myself, and we've got all orders through 10am this morning, with the exception of two have shipped. So everything, Vinny, brought it all to the post office and UPS. So if you place an order between now and Monday morning, it most likely will ship on Monday. So you should have it by the end of this upcoming week. So yeah, feel free to --if you're unsure, just give me a call, or you can chat with us through Facebook, the direct messenger, just send me a message. And I can reply, or you can get on to our website and do chat with us. And I will be happy to chat with you. So if you call and I don't answer, it's just because I'm on the other line. We only have one line. We only have one line, we are small so just leave a message and I will definitely call you back. The phone number I guess I should probably tell you that is 877-830-3405. We pack and ship everything right from here. We're in Plant City, Florida, the post office is walking distance, it's a five minute walk from here, which is amazing. So our mail carrier when she can't make it, or she already came and we need to get more, we can just walk it over there, which is really amazing. It's a one minute drive. And UPS is a five-minute drive. So we were great, this space is perfect for our location to our shipping carriers. 

But I appreciate you watching today. And if you're not watching live, or if you think of a another way to wrap a product you know, with just stuff at home, and it's different than anything I've mentioned, I would love for you to share it so that we can all learn which is -- yeah, I love it. You know we do have like I said we do have lots of gift bags available, different sizes and patterns. But there are those times where you're just in a pinch and you need to wrap something quickly. So I hope those were all helpful, useful ideas. The bag is drying now, so you can use see the finished product and just do some. If you do it with your kids or grandkids please post pictures. I would love for you to just share them with me so much. That would make me so happy. And I hope you have a great rest of your day. And I'll be back soon. Alright. Thank you so much. Bye!