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    Emily Fazio

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A Craft Paper Christmas

December 20, 2011

The holiday season has gotten the best of me yet again.

I always have grand plans of wrapping my gifts beautifully, colorfully, and to photographic-perfection (the same way I remember Santa’s presents, or how all of my most envied packaging pins on Pinterest are), but then I get caught in the retail headlights, over-thinking the investment of wrapping supplies, juggling my time (especially when I’d rather be jamming on a certain bear rug), or becoming immediately frustrated by deciding to wrap the round, squishy thing first. (You should know that anything round, squishy, and unboxed inevitably gets launched across the living room, sliding through a pile of dog fur, and then I need to spend more time lint-brushing stuff, humph, Merry Christmas.)

This year’s gifts aren’t wrapped as as ornately and over-the-top as I’d prefer, I guess they photographed well, even if my camera was a little bit tilty for this here shot.

Gifties, 2011.

Imperfections and simplicity aside, I do like that I managed a wee bit of consistency this season by choosing to use a roll of brown craft paper (bought with a 50% discount from JoAnn’s) instead of investing in “traditional” printed wrapping paper. For $3, a single roll provided enough square footage to wrap all of my gifts, which I know can’t be said for the comparably priced 45-sq. ft. rolls covered in candy canes and Santa. In hindsight, I do regret not price-comparing that purchase with the brown craft contractor’s paper rolls that are sold at Home Depot and Lowe’s, because I know you can get a hell of a lot of brown paper in those contractor bundles for $10. Clearly, it’s my seasonal mission is to find durable wrapping paper at the best cost per square foot. (Bring it on.)

Craft paper and gold assorted ribbons.

I used ribbon that was already on hand. Much of the tulle-ish material and gold embossed ribbons were bought at 90% off last January (I wrote about that steal of a deal here) but I supplemented it with a little bit of green sparkly on gifts for my sister and mom (who would be appreciative of the green and the sparkly and also maybe save it to reuse it). At $1.30 a roll for 24-ft of the green sparkles (a Black Friday early bird sale), I couldn’t say no, but I also couldn’t justify buying the whole gamut of colors to make the girliest sparkly rainbow packages ever. (If you’re ever wondering what to get me, look no further than sparkly ribbon. It’s like crack for a DIYer, thanks.)

Glitzy with bows.

The best part of working with tulle (and I’ve never used it before, so how would I know this before now) is that it allows the most lux bows that I’ve ever created. So full and lush, I’d almost like to toss my curl-able plastic ribbon and stick with this stuff forever.

Sparkly green.

Side note: Remember that the tulle at the fabric shop costs about $1.99/yard and you could save yourself a small fortune in full-priced “tulle ribbon” by just buying a few yards of the fabric and carefully cutting into strips. Bazinga.

When simple bows weren’t desired, layered colored tulle knotted loosely turned out nicely. Reminds me of a tutu. But a manly tutu. That’s Dad’s gift.

Layered colors.

When all was said and done, the only wrapping investment this year was:

  • $3 sale-priced roll of craft paper
  • $2.60 in green sparkly
  • half of my previously purchased tulle ribbon stash (about $3.15)

That right there is <$9 in wrapping accouterments. (Pete would like me to point out that ribbons aren’t necessary on gifts to men, nor is wrapping paper.)

How have you wrapped your goodies?

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Holiday-Related Projects

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

8 Comments


scott
December 20, 2011 at 9:39 am
Reply

great minds think alike! (craft paper)I do the same thing BUT not with paper from a fabric store but painter’s drop paper from Home Depot. brown, greenish, and a purplish papers to choose from and yea very inexpensive. the printed stuff for holidays is just too expensive.



    Emily
    December 20, 2011 at 10:19 am

    I didn’t realize there were colorful options in the painters/contractors variety – I’ll keep that in mind for next year!

Kate @ Twenty-Six to Life
December 20, 2011 at 10:22 am
Reply

I’ve been thinking about wrapping my gifts in craft paper too this year. Unfortunately I’ve slacked on shopping and haven’t wrapped anything yet… whoops…



    Emily
    December 20, 2011 at 10:36 am

    5 days, 100+ hours left. Plenty of time to catch up, right?

Strep
December 20, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Reply

I use brown craft paper to make sewing patterns because that’s what we learned on in school…huge industrial-sized rolls of craft paper.

Dig this craft paper wrap job I saw on Pinterest yesterday with the added bonus of double stick tape: http://pinterest.com/pin/32088216064516964/



    Emily
    December 20, 2011 at 1:03 pm

    I love the hole-punch-double-stick-tape-ribbon for sure (even considered doing it but it seemed… time consuming). Also, not too far off what we did last year with potato print stamping, and drawn sketches on craft paper that were recycled for wrapping would be kind of cool. I could see going crazy with a Sharpie on my brown craft paper and then just chopping up the sheet for various presents.

Fern
December 20, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Reply

everything looks perfectly lovely.
clean and sparkly, plain and tulle-y, practical and silly.

but what I really want to ask you about is dog fur.
will there be (or has there been) a post about living with it?
I too have a big, shedding dog and I want to give up.
so.much.fur.



    Emily
    December 20, 2011 at 3:51 pm

    Oh, the dog fur :)

    The only post that I ever really went into depth about the fur issue is this post about our Dyson (a.k.a. our savior). http://www.merrypad.com/2011/06/22/dyson-animal-tesco-direct/

    We have also tried the Furminator to remove the undercoat during the summer, and that helped to cut down on shedding for a few months, but aside from vacuuming, lint brushing, and sweeping daily, I think the only other option would be to shave him bald. But he’s so cute and fuzzy that I deal with it.

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