Recycled wrapping paper

December 23, 2008

Two more sleeps till Christmas! I love wrapping presents and in years past (before children) I would get very creative. 

I had hoped this year to sew gift bags with Christmas fabric a friend gave us. But you know how that goes, those last few items on the "to-do" seem to simply... not... get... done. But presents still needed to be wrapped and I wanted to package them without using the standard roll of wrapping paper (the ones that have been sitting in my craft closet for years).

I'm trying to avoid the usual (& wasteful) routine of using a brand new piece of paper only to have it torn apart and recycled, or worse garbaged. Not that I despise a traditionally wrapped gift. I'm no respecter of gifts but I wanted to see if I could give our gifts some character and use less paper resources.

Homemade Wrapping Paper

1. Gather reusable paper

We buy a lot of our household stuff throughout the year on-line. Often those purchases are shipped in reams of paper. I'm probably committing some environmental faux-pas with on-line shopping but we can't find everything we need/want locally. I save that paper for craft projects and wrapping packages we send. I raided that supply for making this wrapping paper.

2. The fun part

Decorate the paper. This is a great activity for kids but I wanted to have some fun too. So for the gifts we're giving our children I did the drawing and coloring. I'm not particularly skilled at drawing but I'm learning to not let that stop me. Drawing, coloring, sketching - it's fun! You should try it.

3. Wrapping it all up

I wrapped up the gifts as usual but I wanted to go hard-care and skip the tape. Voila, rubberbands!

My kids LOVE rubberbands. They are used for every conceivable purpose in this house, including the classic game of aim-n-shoot. How perfect to hold the re-used and re-fashioned paper together with something useful.

Maybe the whole world has already discovered this trick but I hadn't. I suppose in the "good ol' days" this is all they had, and of course string and ribbons and such. Have fun wrapping up your love for friends and family. Even if you use regular paper we all know "it's the thought that counts".

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