This is not to dis the convenience of a colorful gift bag with tissue paper, but there's still time to put a little thought and ingenuity into your own tsutsumi for this year's holiday gifting.
- Enlarge a meaningful old photo and use it as gift wrap -- extra great if the photo ties in with the gift inside somehow. I used a picture of my dad and brother in classic 70s tennis togs to wrap a funny book on fatherhood... the book was soon forgotten, but the wrapping paper was definitely memorable.
- Enlarge the gift recipient's signature or favorite doodle...trace it with glue and add glitter. Dazzling!
- If you have photo-editing software and photos of your giftee on your computer, you can have fun using creative filters and wild effects on digital photos, and use the printed output to wrap a gift.
- Old maps are big pieces of paper that make perfect gift wrap -- especially if the map somehow ties in with the gift recipient or the contents of the package.
- Go green: expired calendars, blueprints, posters, shopping bags, newspaper pages (Sports section for the sports guy!) and the Sunday comics can also find a second life as wrapping paper.
- Magazine pages with beautiful (or funny) ads can make lovely gift wrap for small packages.
- If you have little kids, you can turn a fun rainy-afternoon activity into wrapping paper production session. Tape a long roll of kraft brown or white paper on the kitchen floor and put 'em to work with finger paints, holiday-colored markers, or sponge-stamps and tempra paint. Once it's dried you'll have a nice roll of custom gift wrap (which the kids will be proud to see under the tree).
- Think outside of the box -- really! There are lots of clever ways to package your gift besides boxes: new paint cans (available at hardware stores), reusable shopping bags (colorful Chico bags are perfect), takeout containers, mailing tubes, jars...
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