How to Make Cactus-Stamped Gift Bags

Make the wrapping as delightful as the gift inside with this easy DIY gift bag.

A gift bag might be the ideal way to prepare a present for gifting at the holidays. It’s charmingly informal, easy to open, and is gentler on the environment than wrapping paper, which is hard to reuse and often can’t be recycled, either.

To really make a gift special, give it in a hand-stamped and painted bag. You can start with a store-bought sack, but decorate it yourself in a DIY hand-crafted way that makes the pouch a heartfelt part of the gift. You may be worried that this takes more artistic skill than you possess, but the secret is that the bulk of the work is done with … wait for it … a potato.

Yes, all you need is some paint, brushes, and a few tiny little tubers which, when cut in half, make pleasingly shaped stamps. Load them up with paint and use them to make colorful oblongs. In our video, a few blotches and a few strokes with the brush make a delightful Christmas cactus pattern that turns a plain bag into something that would be considered a gift even if it were empty. (But you wouldn’t do that, right? If you need some ideas, check out our holiday gift guides here.)