DIY wrapping paper

Birthday season is officially upon us, which means that lately, A. and I have been wrapping lots of gifts for friends of all ages. I've mentioned before that Anne isn't the craftiest kid, but something she's always up for is making some DIY wrapping paper to use for our presents. It might be because it's always more fun to make something for someone, it might be because it's a really free-form, unrestricted activity -- there really are no limits, no rules.

I used to buy a lot of gift-wrapping stuff, and dedicated a good amount of space in our tiny apartment to wrapping paper, gift bags, boxes, and bows, which was all pretty bad for the environment. But these days my wrapping paper stash takes up approximately 1% of what it used to. A roll of (recyclable, compostable) craft paper, some dot markers, and a couple of stamps are all we need. The results are always festive, if not professionally perfect. It feels nice to give our gifts a personal touch and to know we're not creating a lot of extra waste.

A couple of our favorite finds are the to/from stamp we bought from Etsy to use in place of tags, and rolls of colorful baker's twine to add a little pizzazz to our designs. Do you create your own wrapping paper or cards? What are some of the supplies you use?



Have a happy weekend, all! And happy birthday to all the birthday boys and girls we've celebrated with recently. :)