Girl & Glue Stick

It’s Jesus’s bday month, and that means it’s time to wrap some presents! (Also if you’re Christian, maybe church or something?) Recently I read an article on repurposed wrapping and thought I’d give it a try. If you can hold a glue stick and safely operate scissors, you can do this. Promise.

Recycled Wrapping 101

Y’all, we’re easing our way in to this adventure. Literally I just ripped out a magazine page and used it as wrapping paper, then used some burlap ribbon I had leftover from another project. Bam! Depending on the size of your gift, book pages or newspaper would get the job done too.

Repurposed Paper

Realizing that some of my gifts are bigger than would fit in a magazine page, I dug out some pieces of newsprint that had previously served as padding in a package. There are countless ways to decorate repurposed paper, but this time I grabbed some bubble wrap, acrylic paint, a paint brush and, just for funsies, glitter glue.

1. Optional: Crumple up your paper to give it some texture. (If you’re less fond of the trash aesthetic than I, leave your paper be.) 
2. Cut small-to-medium sized pieces of your bubble wrap. Go ahead and make a piece per color paint you want to use, but don’t worry about the particular shape of each one. Brush some paint onto your bubble wrap… …then use it just like a stamp on your paper. 
3. Holidays are more fun with sparkles! And haphazardly flinging glitter glue around a big piece of paper is even more fun.

   

4. Let dry and get to wrapping!

Speaking of Bows…

Now that you’ve got your gifts covered, why not add a little embellishment? To make these bows you’ll need a magazine, a glue stick, gemstones or other odds and ends (that’ll make sense in a minute), scissors, and some tape. I also used glitter glue on one bow, and some stickers that have come in my recent Pipsticks deliveries (yes, there is a sticker subscription service for adults).

1. Flip through your magazine until a page catches your eye — I chose a picture of a tree that conveniently included Christmas colors, but you do you! 
2. Cut your page into strips. It’s not essential that the widths are identical, but do make sure they’re about the same length. For reference, the ones I used here were about 4.5 inches long. You’ll need ten strips.
3. Grab your glue stick and glue the ends together like so:
4. Glue two loops together to form a figure eight of sorts. Next, add four more loops on each side of your figure eight, using a little glue between each piece.
5. Cover the middle with something and embellish as you see fit! If you don’t happen to have jewels laying around begging to be used (everyone doesn’t?), have no fear. The middle of bow v.2 is a random decorative glass pebble I found at the bottom of a bin. If you’re short on shiny things, a circle cut out of magazines or newspaper would do the trick too!

   

   The gold and silver stripes are some of the Pipsticks stickers I mentioned earlier. Pretty fun, right? Shameless plug: If you too decide that stickers in your mailbox each month are something you want, use this link and you’ll save us both some money. Win win!

Bonus Bow

Ingredients: four leftover magazine strips from last time, a glue stick, and one more obviously authentic ruby gemstone.

1. Start by making two loops again, but this time the “right” side of your magazine page will be facing up on both ends.
2. Glue ’em together. 
3. And what bow doesn’t want a couple of tails?
4. Optional: add a lil somethin’ somethin’ to the middle (enter ruby). To “curl” this bow I glued the center straight onto a gift bag, twisted each tail and used a little glue at the end of each one. And what’s the harm in a few more stickers? 

That’s all for now, folks. But with the right colored magazine pages we could be wrapping recycled all year long!