For the past month, I’ve been talking about lettering gifts. From simple cards and prints to heat embossed lettering, and even yoga mats! But gifts aren’t complete until they are wrapped, so today, I’m ending off the series with a tutorial on customizing your holiday gift wrap with some lettering.

Let’s get started!

(Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. This means if you click through and purchase something, I make a small commission — but you still pay the same amount! I only put affiliate links on items I use and love.)

Here’s what you need:

• Fairly plain, matte gift wrap — I’m using brown kraft paper here
• Fine brush pen (e.g. Pentel Fude Touch Sign or Tombow Fudenosuke)
• Parallel glider — or a ruler and set square!
• Pencil and eraser

1. Cut out a piece of gift wrap

I like the idea of customizing each and every person’s holiday gift wrap, so I’m cutting out an appropriately sized piece.

If you’re a parent with tons of gifts to wrap, you may want to have just the one (or two!) unique designs. In which case, you can either cut out a small piece of gift wrap and work on a ‘sampler’ piece that you’ll replicate, or just work with the huge roll of wrap straight away!

The only ‘rules’ with the gift wrap is it needs to be matte (glossy wrap won’t take ink very well) and either plain or have a subtle pattern. Besides brown kraft paper, which I love for its old-school charm, I also have sheets of pastel watercolor gradient and marbled gift wrap that I can customise.

2. Draw guide lines on gift wrap in pencil

On the reverse side of the gift wrap, draw guidelines for your lettering.

I don’t possess the gift of writing in a straight line, so I need these guidelines. They can also be helpful if you’re planning write diagonally instead of straight across.

You know how much guidance you need best! For me, I need the basic ruled lines, so I use my parallel glider to fill up the paper. If keep your slanted angle constant while writing is a problem, you may want to add extra lines to form a slanted grid as well.

3. Cut strips of paper down to size and design 1-4 holiday phrases.

Now you know how much spacing you have to work with, cut strips of paper about the size of each line, and design 1-4 festive phrases.

You know the ones:
Happy holidays. Seasons greetings. Merry Christmas. Happy Thanksgiving. We wish you a blessed Christmas.

The list goes on! Since you’re personalising your holiday gift wrap, you could even add names in there!

4. Layout design on lightbox!

Arrange your strips of paper into a repetitive pattern on your lightbox and tape it down with some washi tape.

If you don’t have a lightbox, a glass table top with a torch light or small lamp underneath works just as well. I know some people use their phones or iPads, but I won’t recommend that since this is a bigger piece of work!

5. Lay out your gift wrap and letter

With your gift wrap blank side up, align the guidelines with your design, then tape it down.

You should be able to see the guidelines with the light shining through!

When it’s all in position, you can start lettering and shift the paper when necessary. Most of my gifts tend to be small, so I use a finer brush pen, like the Pentel Fude Touch Sign Pen here. If you’re wrapping a large gift, an Artline Stix or Tombow Dual Brush Pen would work just fine!

What will you be lettering on your holiday gift wrap?

Let me know in the comments, or if you wrap anything with lettering gift wrap this holiday season and share on Instagram, tag me at @lyssycreates so I can see it!