Cereal Box Gift Boxes with Produce Net Bag Bows

I just love cereal boxes.

We always have loads of them and I use them for everything. I glue small pattern pieces onto them for stability. I use them as a backing for product tags. I’ve started making shipping envelopes out of them to send things in. (I’ll get around to writing about that one of these days. I got the idea from this pin, but changed it slightly.)

I also use them to make magazine files.

Those are super easy to make. I already have a set of Ikea Knuff magazine files, so I just traced the shape of them onto the cereal boxes, adapting the curve to fit the box size, and cut them out.

See how perfect they are for my kids’ activity books and sticker collection? I didn’t come up with this idea myself, but I can’t seem to find the original idea online, so sorry, no link.

But here we’re talking about eco gift wrap these days, so here’s another awesome way to use up your extra cereal boxes: making upcycled cereal box gift boxes!

Once again, this wasn’t my idea and there’s a pretty clear tutorial on how to do this at Compulsive Craftiness, so I won’t get into how to make the boxes themselves. But I will show you a couple of super easy ways to decorate the boxes with…

…fruit and vegetable produce net bags! I just love these things. They’re so colorful and are made in different ways, with different types of netting and stretchiness.

They are also slightly abrasive, so they make really great dish scrubbers that are actually pretty gentle. You cut off any metal clasp things on a smaller net (like the ones for garlic) and tie a knot, turn it inside out (so the knot’s inside), stuff it full of other fruit nets, and tie a knot on top. (The one in the picture above has been used, so don’t mind its relative scumminess.)

But I digress. Back to gift wrap. Let’s keep those super nifty cereal box gift boxes closed. Cut off knots, metal parts and labels so that you end up with a tube of netting.

If you have a smaller stretchy net, you can just slip it right over your box as it is.

Or make it more visually interesting by cutting it in half, making two tubes, and slip them over the box so that they overlap in the center. Easy peasy!

If your netting is larger/looser/not-so-stretchy, why not make a ribbon to tie around the box? Cut up the rectangle of netting, leaving a bit intact at the top. My light was running out as I was taking these pictures and I couldn’t seem to get a decent picture of the next step, but it’s exactly the same as with my t-shirt yarn tutorial, so you can look there for images. Open up the tube and cut across from each cut to the next cut over. This will get you one long piece.

Now give that piece a good stretching out. It’ll get a lot thinner, but more sturdy. See the difference between the stretched and the non-stretched parts?

Then just tie it around your gift the same way you would with any old ribbon. Mine was pretty long, so I folded it in half before wrapping it around, but you could also get creative and wrap it around more than once or something else like that.

These ribbon ideas are super quick and will give a nice touch of color and eco-friendliness to your gifts!

For more great eco-friendly gift wrap ideas, check out the rest of the Cucicucicoo Eco Gift Wrap series!