One of the things I love most about being part of Etsy’s EtsyGreetings Team is not only how much of a community our team is, but the efforts everyone strives to put into doing team activities. Right now our team has two events going on – A fantastic Holiday Boutique event – see details on the EtsyGreetings.blogspot.com site and a fun Blog Hop.

This blog hop isn’t centered around any particular giveaway or sale; there are no hoops for you to jump through to get what you want. Some of the blogs are featuring downloadable templates and instructions for some of their own holiday traditions (I hear one of them even has a handmade advent calendar!). Keep reading through the hop to find more of these great handmade holiday treasures and traditions!

One of my favorite, or most memorable, holiday handmade traditions isn’t I guess technically “tradition”, but it’s something my Grammie (my grandmother on my Mom’s side) did almost every year for Christmas. Grammie always went all-out for the Holidays. She made Thanksgiving and Christmas memorable for the whole family just from the attention and care she put into everything. Honestly, she could have made Costco lasagne look like an amazing feast just from the presentation. I’m not going to write about her culinary skills, though.

Every Christmas, Grammie made opening gifts that much more special by hand-stamping her gift wrap. Her gift wrap was hand-stamped by her on Kraft or butcher paper. The gift wrap was always beautiful and since it was hand-stamped, no package was the same. She sometimes used different colors, green or red; and the hand stamped decorations on the packages somehow made it more special. Growing up I wasn’t as into papercrafts like I am now, and I wish that I could have her rubber stamps in my collection.

Hand-stamping gift wrap isn’t difficult, or very time consuming to do. It doesn’t have to have a specific design, although you can do that if you have the time or desire to. Use whatever images, sentiments or shapes that you want – Christmas trees, nativity scenes, Christmas stars, mittens, snowmen, angels, etc. Get some plain white or Kraft paper – you can buy HUGE rolls for around $20-25 online (check out Discount School Supply for multiple colors of butcher paper rolls!)- and a lot of companies will ship free (Side Note: I’ve never bought from the Discount School Supply yet, so I don’t know what their products or service is like, but they do have an awesome variety of butcher paper rolls)! Use a variety of ink colors to make your stamps pop more – Cranberry Red, Green, Gold and decorate more with glitter dots, buttons and ribbon to make your packages extra special!

Sorry, I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping this year so I don’t have any pictures of handmade wrapping paper yet, but I will post some before Christmas!

Thank you for creating with me!