3 Beautiful Ways to Wrap Gifts Using Your Favorite Photos

I’ve got three beautiful ideas for wrapping Christmas gifts using your favorite family photos. It’s a great way to share your family’s Christmas photos in a more creative way than the typical Christmas card.

I know some people hate wrapping gifts but I love it!  I love finding the perfect wrapping paper, adding fun ribbons, and pulling everything together to make a beautiful package.

When Krista from The Happy Housie invited me to join with some other fantastic bloggers in sharing creative gift wrapping ideas, I knew exactly what I wanted to share.

I love family photos and I’m always looking for new ways to get them off of my computer and out where the people I love can enjoy them!  So using our favorite photos to personalize gift wrap seemed like a perfect solution.

I chose to use some of my favorite recent photos of my kids as well as Christmas photos from the past few years. I also really want to find some old photos from my parents’ and grandparents’ childhood Christmases to add to some gifts but I haven’t had a chance to search those out yet.

This post contains affiliate links which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission but it won’t cost you a penny more.  Click here to see my full disclosure policy.

3 Beautiful Ways to Wrap Gifts using Your Favorite Photos

As far as the wrapping paper itself goes, my favorite sources for really beautiful wrapping paper are TJMaxx, Marshalls, and HomeGoods.  That’s where I found those beautiful plaid papers (though Amazon also has some great plaid options). 

And as you can see, I usually skip the paper ribbons and bows and use chunky yarn, twine, or rick rack.

Yarn pompoms also make an awesome substitute for bows. (I have a simple pompom tutorial here.) 

And of course good old brown kraft paper also makes fabulous wrapping paper and is super affordable.

DIY Photo Gift Tags

I am so excited about how these photo gift tags turned out. And they took less than five minutes to make! 

I think these photo tags could be great for anyone but they are absolutely perfect for little kids.

None of my boys are old enough to read yet, so this is a super simple way to make it easy for them to see whose gift is whose. Plus, kids love seeing photos of themselves.

It’s super easy to make these photo gift tags. I transformed my photos into black and white photos first because I really like how the black and white stands out against wrapping paper. 

(You can do this with any type of photo editing program.  Canva is a great free photo editing site.)

Then just print your photos on cardstock and cut them into circles. You can cut them out with scissors or use a circle punch to make it extra easy.

Then use a hole punch to make a hole and tie the tags onto your gifts.

Wrapping Gifts with Watercolor Photos

These sweet little watercolor gifts are so beautiful.

This is a great way to share favorite Christmas photos or other favorite family photos. And I love that the person who receives the gift can save the cute photo and stick it in a frame or add it to their fridge if they choose.

These are the photos I started with:

I turned them into adorable watercolors using the Waterlogue app.

(If you’ve never used the Waterlogue app, it’s a super fun app for iphones and ipads that can give any of your photos the look of beautiful watercolor paintings.)

After I transformed my photos, I printed them out on cardstock and attached them to my packages.

I just love how beautiful and simple they are.

Isn’t that red package with the newborn photo just the sweetest ever?  I think it’s absolutely perfect for a gift for the grandparents.

Gift Wrapped with a Photo Ornament

Finally, the simplest idea of all.

I framed one of my favorite photos of my sweet baby in a simple photo frame ornament and tied it to the front of the gift. (This red one is from Michaels.)

So simple and beautiful and the ornament becomes part of the gift as well.

I love this for sharing sweet baby photos but I also love the idea of gathering old photos from the recipient’s own childhood Christmases and turning them into ornaments.

So that’s how I’m using our favorite photos to wrap gifts this year!

Ready for a few more fabulous gift wrap ideas?  Some of my friend’s are sharing their beautiful and creative DIY Gift Wrap Ideas today as well!! Hop over to check out what they have in store for you…