How to wrap and pack a backpack as a gift

Can you make a backpack look good when you wrap it as present? Backpacks make such great, useful and long term gifts, but it can be tricky to wrap so it looks amazing when its opened. Try these five low-cost steps to make sure your traveller is delighted when they see their travel gift for the first time.

1. Collect free packaging

In the run up to a birthday, Christmas or in the gifting season, look out for packaging paper and bubble wrap coming through your door with other deliveries. With all the online orders we receive these days, we a lot of high quality paper and foam is often thrown out! You can reuse them to great effect

2. Pack backpack out with paper

If you’ve ordered your backpack in the post it will arrive flat. We want to change this. Grab the packaging paper you’ve collected - newspaper works too - and pack the backpack out so that it’s light, full and you can show it off in all its 3D glory! It will help the traveller receiving it imagine themselves using it from the moment they pull off the wrapping paper.

3. Add small notes to make it personal

Take 3 minutes to add three or four little notes in the different pockets. Keep them short and sweet e.g.: “Keep your passport safe in here!” “Your laptop lives in here!” “Water bottle here” or include a little handwritten note to let them know you’re thinking about how they will use it. This is a totally cost-free way of enhancing any gift. But a backpack, with all its little pockets, benefits greatly from this.

4. Simplify the shape with bubble wrap

There are a few little things that stick out on a backpack like straps and buckles. They can be little difficult to wrap. Wrap one piece of bubble wrap or foam around the 3D packed backpack to make it into one smooth shape. This way, there will be no odd corners that could break the wrapping paper. This works for any object without uniform sides that you'd like to wrap.

5. Wrap the backpack!

Now that your backpack is packed out in 3D form and has bubble wrap around it, it will be much easier to wrap. For larger backpacks, I suggest using one long piece which goes from the front to the back. You then tape the paper to join up down each side and along the base.

That's it :) That's how to pack and wrap and backpack so it not only looks good, but so it delights the traveller you're giving it to.

Wishing you safe travels!

Sarah Giblin, RiutBag designer

Check out my secure city backpack designs at www.riutbag.com