I love making gifts for people. I feel like I have put a part of myself into their gift, and to me, handmade gifts are so special.

Earlier this year, I made a couple drawstring gifts for some kids in my life and thought they would be great ideas for Christmas gifts as well.

Drawstring bags are easy to make (here are a few tutorials), and there are plenty of ideas for gifts to put in them. I will show you three ideas.

Bean Bag Game

Bean bags are easy to make. Just cut whatever size squares of fabric, sew them right sides facing leaving a couple inches unsewn to turn, clip the corners and turn, fill with beans or rice, sew 1/8 in along the edge to finish.

PDF of game ideas:

Bean Bag Ideas Page 1

Bean Bag Ideas Page 2

Exploding Sticks or Stick Bombs

Check out our post about it for some examples and how-to videos.

Once Upon a Time Story Bag

My kids love telling stories. I saw this on Pinterest a long time ago and thought it was a cute way to give inspiration for story telling. Then on Amazon, I found these Rory’s Story Cubes, and my aunt bought them for Ninja Boy for his birthday. They are so much fun! We roll the dice and tell a story using every object or idea that are on the cubes. They are not expensive and have a lot of different sets, so if you want to buy the story cubes and make a cute little drawstring bag to put them in that would be ok too! Or if you are feeling creative, you could make your own story prompts.

I have been saving juice bottle caps for awhile knowing I would use them for a project one day. I finally found my project! You could use blocks stones, or baby food jar lids.

I painted the caps with about three coats of acrylic paint. I had considered printing off some clip art to mod podge onto the top, but I decided I needed to stretch myself creatively a little more. So I made a list of things I wanted to paint on the tops and got busy. It was a long but fun and rewarding process. If you don’t want to paint, you could use clip art and mod podge them onto the lids. After the lids were painted and dry, I sealed them with a couple coats of mod podge. I also painted and sealed the backs of the lids.

I used this tutorial to make my drawstring bag. I used a chalk pencil to write out “Once upon a time…” then used white embroidery floss to stitch using something like a stem stitch because a plain backstitch wasn’t looking right.

There are many more ways you could use a simple drawstring bag. They are not complicated to make and are fun as gifts or even as reusable gift bags instead of wrapping.

What will you make a drawstring bag for?