ReWrap-up; Peace, Love and Joy

Sorry for the silence these last few days... but my attention has unfortunately been dragged away from pleasant things like this blog.

I don't want to focus on it too much here but my happy little city was hit with some very tragic events a few days ago. You can follow this link to get the story. Needless to say our thoughts, prayers and attentions have been with the people effected most by this. And we are all trying to figure out how to make our homes, neighbors homes and the city in general feel safe enough to sleep again at night.

I promised a few more wrapping paper reuse crafts this week so I'm posting two tonight. To touch on something so tragic and then switch to a happy go lucky craft project is a hard segue. I guess the only think I can say about this first project is the sentiment means a bit more now than it did a few days ago when I first sketched this card out.

Now onto the crafts!

Reuse your wrapping paper to make... well gifts. Tiny little boxes for use on a card.

I cut a few squares of cardboard from a clothing gift box and wrapped them in leftover wrapping paper. With a bit of thin decorative wire I made bows.

The tags say Peace, Love and Joy.

Inside I put this message-

It'll be a great holiday card for next year.

I can also see this as a Thank You for a lovely gift, a Happy Birthday Card or a Gift Card Holder (Or literally a Gift Card- Card). I know, I know, my humor is so good you're resisting the urge to hit the back button on your browser right now aren't you.

My second reuse for conventional wrapping paper is a snowflake kaleidoscope.

The book pictured here is one I found in a used book shop.

It's called the snowflake by Libbrecht/Rasmussen.

Here are my directions for how to make a kaleidoscope from a mailing tube- another great reuse for throw-away materials!

And if you missed it- here's my first post on wrapping reuse: making a frame.

I'm not sure if I'll have another post this weekend or not- but I'll most certainly be back on Monday with a Cupkins post for January!

A Happy, Happy and Safe New Year to you all!

Wrapping Paper Frame

Before the holidays I had a few ideas for recycled and reuse gift wrapping- but because I know almost all of us (me included) still use conventional wrapping paper (which can't be recycled) I thought I'd try a few ideas to reuse some of our paper from this year.

Idea number 1 is this frame. I saved a piece of this pretty silver snowflake paper ( I just love this pattern).

And I found a plain wooden frame at the craft store (for only 1 dollar).

First thing I did was trace the frame and all the edges. After I traced the basic frame I turned it onto each side so I could trace those then I estimated the depth of the inner edge and drew that onto the paper.

Sorry for the darkness in these photos- it was so gray outside there was no getting good light no matter how many lamps I turned on. And the reverse side of this wrapping paper is very beige!

I did trace this a little more accurately than it looks- the pen I used didn't like the waxy surface of the paper very much and half the time it only made an impression in the paper instead of actually inking it. It was fine for tracing... just didn't show up on camera.

You'll see here I labeled each of the areas.

Next I cut a 45 degree angle at the each corner of both the outer and inner edge.

Then I coated the entire front of frame with Mod Podge.

I realized that when I this the inner edge would have a bit of wood exposed on each corner. To fix that I put a small strip on wrapping paper on each of the corners before I placed the frame onto the large sheet of paper. Sorry but I forgot to take a picture of that- It was an on the fly adjustment.

After that little adjustment I placed the entire frame onto the large piece of wrapping paper. Lining it up to my tracing as best as I could. I found putting the frame onto the paper was easier than trying to place the paper onto the frame. For one reason the paper wants to curl up and having the paper weighted down flat produced less wrinkles overall.

Then I coated and wrapped the edges one at a time. First I did the short sides of the outer edge, then the long sides. Don't be afraid to pull the paper tight to get a nice smooth corner.

After the entire outer edge was covered I did the inner edge working in the same order- short sides to long sides.

The last step was to seal the entire thing with another coat of Mod Podge. Let it dry for about a half hour and you've got a beautiful frame.

You could do the same thing with paper for other occasions. I think a birthday frame with pictures from the party would be adorable. And one done with paper leftover from a wedding gift would probably be lovely.