This is a guest post from Mrs. Money who blogs about saving money and the environment at The Ultimate Money Blog. She blogs about saving money and the environment while living a frugal life. If you enjoy this post, please check out her blog!

Do you need some new ideas on inexpensive and green ways to wrap your Christmas gifts this year? Have no fear; I’ve got some great ideas on how you can save money and be green with your wrapping endeavors. Here’s some tips to get you started.

Unique Wrapping Paper

Old newspaper. You can use the comics section for a child’s gift. For the football fanatic, use the sports section.

Kraft brown shipping paper. I buy rolls of this at the dollar store for shipping purposes and it is amazing! You can use this to wrap your presents and leave it plain, or you can decorate it with rubber stamps or have your kids draw their own creations.

Brown paper grocery bags. Remember when you used them to cover your books in school? Use them to cover small boxes, and then decorate!

Leftover wallpaper. I know when I go to the thrift store, there’s normally some rolls of rejected wallpaper waiting for someone to snag. Hopefully you’ll find a fun and funky print!

Old maps. It would be really cute to highlight the route if your gift was tickets for a trip!

Reusable Wrapping Paper

Holiday Fabric bags. Around Christmas time, holiday fabric goes on sale. If you can get some at a good price, you can cut the fabric to fit the boxes, and then secure it with tape, safety pins, or even sew it shut. Then you can reuse it next year!

Towels. Wrap your towels around the gift, tie with a ribbon or string, and now you’ve got more than one gift! This would be a great idea for newlyweds.

Old pillowcases. These should be a good size to put flat, long boxes in. You can secure the end with some ribbon and make it look cute! Or, if you’re really crafty, you can make it look like a candy roll by securing both sides and putting the present in the middle.

Old T-shirts. You can sew up the bottom, put your present through the neck, and then secure with a ribbon at the top.

Cloth grocery bags. Last year I used many of these for putting different small gifts in for my aunts. They loved it because there was no wrapping, and now they had a cloth grocery bag out of the deal.

Receiving blankets. Baby gifts would be so cute wrapped in a flannel receiving blanket.

Hopefully I’ve given you a few ideas that may help you save time and money wrapping your holiday presents this year. Go green!

What’s your favorite unique way to wrap a present?

Photo by Marco Arment.