A Rainbow of Christmas Calico Bags

Despite how many times I pin "pretty packaging" projects to my Pinterest board and swear to myself that I'm going to do something fabulous with this year's Christmas wrapping when it comes time to do it I just want a quick and simple approach!

I like to also use the opportunity to get rid of all the excess packaging and bags and paper that have been accumulated during the year, so I came up with a plan to reuse lots of the plain calico bags that Studio Calico (used to) send their embellishments in.

These are perfect for wrapping clothes and soft toys and other more malleable presents and so I've ended up doing a couple for each of the girls.

I made no secret of what I was doing and throughout the process the girls watched me create these. We don't 'do' Santa in our house - all of their Christmas presents come from us, so they obviously know that I have to wrap them. In fact, I even let them be a part of this process by encouraging them to suggest what colour schemes they would like for their bags. And the addition of glitter was Moriah's idea!

Initially I thought I might just leave it with the plain colours, but debated in my head about more detail with stamps (I briefly flirted with the idea of embroidery but that seemed more time consuming than it's worth!) Ultimately I settled with some simple coloured stamping. 

I think this blue/green one is my favourite. Reminds me of a tropical ocean - and the glitter makes me think of mermaids ;-)

This one I'll call my summer sunset.

Similar colour scheme here but with a bit more pink focus. Moriah also specifically requested a touch of gold so I experimented with a stripe of gold acrylic paint mixed in amongst the waterpainted other colours. It obviously doesn't blend as well and I found that I had to apply quite a good amount to get it to spread on the calico. But it works well enough as a whole.

And of course we couldn't go past some purple for Moriah's other bag. It's her absolute favourite favourite FAVOURITE colour!

Tied up tightly with string so there will be no peeking until Christmas Day - which is just around the corner hey? Therefore I better wish you all a very Merry Christmas in case I don't see you beforehand! Enjoy yourself :-)