DIY paper gift bag

I love making my own party favors and this is the perfect basic paper bag to hold any small (or large) treat for a little something extra for your guests. This is a tutorial for how to make a paper gift bag – templates included.

Yes, I understand you can always just order a dozen gift bags from Amazon for half the price but what’s the fun of that?

Plus, these paper bags are super easy to make and you can use almost any type of material to make them from recycled grocery bags to leftover wrapping paper to even newspaper and magazine pages.

While you can make this with existing materials you have around, I have a few recommendations if you’re looking to make them in bulk or don’t want to scrounge for paper.

For more gift wrapping ideas without boxes, check out the full article here.

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Materials for DIY Paper Bag

Cardstock – If you are looking to make a stiffer bag, I highly recommend using medium weight cardstock. Here are some of my favorite brands:

• Assorted Starter Pack – Basic assorted colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
• Cricut Joy Insert Card Packs – You don’t have to use these with the Cricut Joy, they are nice material kids for cardmaking.
• Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte-colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
• Poptone Assorted Variety Pack – This is the perfect peppy assortment of colors of heavy cardstock. It’s a heavy cardstock assortment with colors I actually use frequently for cardmaking.
• Seasonal Assorted Variety Pack – This is a slight variation on the Poptone assortment and has a quite few neutrals that complement almost any accent color.
• Stardream Metallics Line – For paper crafts, the Stardream line is the go-to for a metallic shimmer finish. It is the perfect sheen to make any project pop. The core is also colored is which hard to find for metallic paper.

Glue – I make a lot of cards and paper flowers so I’m a bit of a glue snob. Basically, any glue works here but if you want to hold up, I recommend one of the following:

Cricut – I use a cutting machine to do some of the cutting for this project. This of course is optional but it sure makes things go faster. Check out my reviews for Best Cricut machines for beginners if you’re new to the Cricut.

Templates – This Printable paper bag template along with the other gift bag templates are available for free in both PDF and SVG formats in my resource library.

how to make a gift bag out of a4 paper

Start by cutting out the paper bag template

I cut mine using a Cricut cutting machine and a blue light grip mat. If you are cutting this by hand, I recommend printing out the template and then tracing the pattern onto your material. Recycled materials are hard to send through the printer.

I used to love Origami so I’ve spent a lot of time folding and creasing so I just fold the edges freehand. If you want a little more guidance, I suggest using a ruler and scraping device.

Make all the creases before gluing the tabs together.

That’s all there is to it!

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