Festive Make: Handmade Wrapping Paper

Hi everyone!

Whether you have done your Christmas shopping yet or not, you may be wondering how to make your presents stand out with a sprinkle of uniqueness, how to make the finishing touches of your gifts reflect your style and creativeness, and how to make a pile of presents a little less expensive than last year... Well why not make your own wrapping paper?

The paper itself is cheap and goes a long way, the stamps can be used again and again, it is quick and easy to do... and no one else will have the same wrapping paper as you!

For this you will need:

• A roll of brown parcel wrap
• Christmas stamps and ink - the stamps shown below are from The English Stamp Company. You can choose from hundreds of different high quality stamps in many different sizes, along with a variety of coloured ink.
• Some raffia twine in red or green

 

Firstly, cut out the amount of brown parcel wrap needed for the present and lay on a flat surface. You may need to hold it down with a heavy item in each corner to prevent it from rolling.

Then choose your stamp and coloured ink. Press the stamp gently into the ink and start stamping! You can stamp randomly, in a pattern, in a line - whatever you like. The great thing about this is that each present is wrapped in individually decorated paper, so each one is unique.

 

Leave the ink to dry for a few minutes and then wrap up the gift. Finally, use a piece of raffia twine to tie around the present: this can match or contrast with the colour you have printed with.

If you want to, you can use a luggage label as a tag and print this as well so that you have a matching label. Just print the label as you did for the paper, replace the string with some more raffia, and tie to the present.

So, as you can see, this is a super easy project to do - and it is ever so effective! Plus you can keep the wrapping paper when presents have been opened to recycle into homemade cards, crackers or paper chains in the future!

Helen xx