Simple and Easy DIY Gift Bags

{These are headed to other far away members of our pack)

We're heading out for Christmas and I was planning to wrap the gifts we are taking with us.   Enter the TSA website that states that wrapped gifts may be unwrapped if they look "suspicious".  We've had our bags searched by TSA and know they are not careful about repacking.  Pretty sure that means the unwrapping and repacking would be less than ideal.  So I'll be wrapping our gifts after we arrive.

I didn't want to pack long tubes of wrapping paper, so I made some easy gift bags that I'll fill when we get there.  I hauled out my stash of blank craft paper bags.  Not much holiday spirit happening with these bags!  I do understand that normal people would just go out and buy bags , but we all know normal is highly over-rated.  Besides I HAVE bags, just naked ones.

Enter a sheet of Cavallini Christmas wrapping paper.  I love Cavallini  papers - so much going on, so many little bits that can be used for all sorts of projects.  I guess you could actually use these as wrapping paper, but at $4.50 for a 20x28 inch piece, it's pretty pricey wrapping, but I get a lot of mileage out of one sheet.   This is heavy archival cream Italian matte paper, worthy of any art project.

For one set, I swiped some white paint over gold paper doilies to tone them down a bit, then glued on images cut from the wrapping paper and glued the doily onto the bag.  

For the others, I swiped gold paint mixed with blending gel (to get a more transparent finish) onto some Italian text pages.  Then glued down wrapping paper cut-outs.

Quick, easy, made from stuff from the stash, and no TSA personnel involvement.