Wrapping Paper Maker

How to print your own wrapping paper

1. Pick a pattern and colours. The sheet on the left (on a phone, at the top) is exactly what prints.
2. Add a name or a photo if you want one. “Mia” or “Happy birthday Mia” repeats twice in every tile; a photo shows as round pictures between the motifs. For a birthday, type the name in the quick start box and press Happy birthday paper.
3. Measure the box with the calculator above to see how big a piece you need and how many sheets that is. It can put that number of sheets into the PDF for you.
4. Download the PDF and print at 100% (“Actual size”). For a bigger present, tape sheets edge over edge on the back before you wrap. If you ticked Grid on the back, print two-sided (flip on the long edge) so each sheet gets cutting lines on its plain side.

Questions

Is this printable wrapping paper really free?

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark and no paid version, and the PDF is made in your own browser, so you can print as many sheets as you like. The 17 patterns cover Christmas (stars, trees, snowflakes, holly, gift boxes), birthdays and children (confetti, balloons, Happy birthday lettering, dogs, cats, cars, books, dinosaurs, pirates) and any time (polka dots, candy stripes, hearts), each in 8 colour themes.

Which patterns suit a birthday or a child’s present?

Nine are made for it. Happy birthday repeats the words in brick rows with confetti between them, in whichever lettering you pick (script or serif). Dogs has dog faces with bones and paw prints, Cats cat faces with balls of yarn, Cars little cars driving both ways with traffic cones, Books stacks of books and open books for a reader, Dinosaurs long-necked and plated dinosaurs with footprints, and Pirates sailing ships, skull-and-crossbones, treasure maps where X marks the spot and compass roses, with gold coins in between. All of them are our own simple drawings, not characters from a film or a toy brand. At the Medium size a dog or a dinosaur is about 1 cm across; choose Large (a 9 cm repeat) for a small child, where each one is about 1.5 cm. The quickest route: type the name in Birthday? Quick start, press the button, then pick the pattern. A long name gets smaller lettering, so the whole line always fits in the repeat. For a child who likes to colour, choose Black & white and the animals, cars and pirate ships print as outlines to colour in.

Can I put a face on the wrapping paper?

Yes: under Put a face on it, add a photo. It appears twice in every tile as a round picture, between the motifs, and you can add a name as well. The photo is cut to its middle square and to a circle about 2 cm across at the Medium size, so pick a close-up where the face fills most of the frame; a full-length photo makes the face tiny. It also works for a pet. The photo is read by this page on your device and is never uploaded. A face prints best on 100 g/m² or heavier paper in one of the light colour themes.

How do I print the grid on the back?

Tick Grid on the back. The PDF then has two pages per sheet: the pattern, then a white page of faint grey lines 1 cm apart on A4 and A3 or ½ inch apart on Letter, a little darker every 5 cm (or every inch), like the back of a roll of shop wrap. Print two-sided and choose “flip on long edge”. Without a two-sided printer, print the odd pages, put the sheets back blank side up, and print the even pages. The grid is centred on the page, so a sheet that goes back in the other way round still gets a full grid. Lines are true to size only at 100% (“Actual size”); “Fit to page” shrinks them by a few percent. On ink-heavy dark themes the back may show a faint shadow of the pattern through thin paper, which does not hide the lines.

A4 or Letter: which one do I need?

A4 (210 × 297 mm) is the paper size in Europe, the UK, Australia and most of the world; US Letter (8.5 × 11 in, 216 × 279 mm) is used in the US and Canada. The page starts on Letter if your browser is set to US or Canadian English and on A4 elsewhere; switch with the Paper buttons. The pattern fills the whole page on every size. Most home printers cannot print the outer 3 to 5 mm of a sheet, so expect a thin white border. Trim it off, or hide it under the next sheet when you tape two together. Marks and the note, if you switch them on, stay at least 6 mm inside the edge so the printer never cuts them off.

Can I print wrapping paper on A3?

Yes: pick A3 under Paper and the PDF pages are A3 (297 × 420 mm), twice the area of A4. One A3 sheet wraps a piece up to 42 × 29.7 cm, so a paperback of 18 × 11 × 2.5 cm (a 31 × 24.5 cm piece) goes in one sheet with no taping, where A4 takes two; a 30 × 20 × 10 cm shoebox takes 4 A3 sheets instead of 8 A4. The honest catch: most home printers only take A4 or Letter. You need an A3 printer, or take the PDF to a print shop or copy shop and ask for it at 100% on A3, not scaled. Like a home printer, many shop printers leave a few millimetres white at the edge, so trim it. With only an A4 printer you still have two routes: choose A4 here and let the box calculator put the right number of sheets with taping marks in the PDF, or print the A3 PDF with Adobe Acrobat Reader’s Poster option, which splits each A3 page over several A4 sheets (more than two, because of the overlap and the printer’s white edge) to tape together. To keep the file buildable on a phone, the A3 pattern is drawn at about 250 dpi instead of 300; on wrapping paper you will not see the difference unless your nose is on the paper.

Can I print it in black and white?

Choose Black & white (ink saver) in Colours. The background stays white and every motif becomes a thin black outline, so a sheet uses a small fraction of the ink of the dark red or green themes, which cover the whole page. It looks good on brown kraft paper, which many home printers take, and children can colour the outlines in before you wrap. The dark themes are the hungriest: one full A4 sheet of Christmas red is a lot of toner or ink, so test-print one sheet before printing six.

How much wrapping paper does a box need?

The piece goes once around the box and folds over both ends. Around: 2 × (width + height) + an overlap; across: length + height + an overlap. The calculator uses 4 cm (1.5 in) of overlap. Worked example: a shoebox of 30 × 20 × 10 cm needs 2 × (20 + 10) + 4 = 64 cm around and 30 + 10 + 4 = 44 cm across. That is bigger than one A4 sheet, so it takes 8 A4 sheets taped together, 4 across and 2 down (Letter also needs 8, A3 only 4: 2 across and 2 down). A paperback of 18 × 11 × 2.5 cm needs 31 × 24.5 cm, which fits two A4 sheets or one A3. Measure with a tape measure, not by eye: a box usually turns out bigger than you think.

Which paper should I print on?

Plain 80 to 90 g/m² (20 to 24 lb) office paper folds crisply and is fine for books, boxes and small gifts. 100 to 120 g/m² paper feels more like shop-bought wrap and hides what is inside better. Avoid card: it cracks at the folds. Glossy photo paper makes rich colour but scuffs where it folds.

What is the seamless tile PNG for?

It is one repeat of the pattern at 300 dpi (4.5, 6.5 or 9 cm square, for Small, Medium or Large). Its right edge continues into its left and its bottom into its top. So a print shop, a design program or a fabric or paper printing service can repeat it over any size, such as a roll of A3 sheets, gift bags or tissue paper, with no visible join.

Does the pattern line up across two taped sheets?

Not exactly. Each sheet starts the pattern at its own corner, and a 12 mm overlap moves it. On scattered patterns (stars, snowflakes, confetti, hearts) you will not notice. On the grid patterns (dogs, cats, cars, books, dinosaurs) a row may jump by half a motif at the join, which reads as part of the pattern. On candy stripes and polka dots you can see the join, so put it on the bottom of the box.