One of my favorite projects to make is to decorate a gift bag like this Poppy Moments Altered Birthday Gift Bag that I made for a friend’s birthday. Sometimes I use a bag I got out shopping and even if it has the store name on the side, I can cover the name with paper and decorate. It’s almost like making a card on the side of a bag! And if you don’t already have a cute shopping bag, you can buy a bunch at the craft store.

To decorate this shopping bag, I used the Poppy Moments Dies and just cut out a few flowers and leaves! I also used the Sprig Punch to punch a few leafy sprigs out of Vellum Cardstock. I made this bag pretty simple because there was no store printing that I had to cover up. After putting a gift inside the bag with tissue paper, you could also tie a ribbon around the bag handles. You could also attach a gift tag that you made. So many possibilities!

Here’s a birthday gift bag I decorated several years ago. The bag itself is pretty with a swirly leaf print on it, but I did need to cover the store name but that’s usually easy to do, sometimes on the front and back of the bag.

This gift bag turned out really pretty I think! I don’t remember if the bag was plain on the front or if it had printing on it, but it was easy to cover almost the whole front of the bag almost like if I had been making a card! You can see how you could make the same design for a card just by making it smaller!

If you are cleaning up closets and cabinets during the pandemic, save those small shopping bags and do something creative with them! Decorate for birthdays or Christmas or something generic and then you will have some personalized gift bags ready to go! Or maybe you can make a bag that matches your gift.

Altering or decorating bags you have around the house is something fun you can easily do and a great way to recycle! And it just might save you a trip to the store for a gift bag!