From the Bin Recycled Gift Wrap Project

Growing up, I used to roll my eyes at my grandma when it came time to open gifts on our birthdays or Christmas. With each present that was unwrapped came an exclamation from her about how beautiful the paper gift-wrap was well as some encouragement to hold onto it to use again. “Why would anyone hold onto paper that’s been wrinkled, folded, and torn?” I would think to myself. 

Many years later, I now find myself admiring paper of all types. It’s common for me to hold on to beautiful tissue paper, paper bags, and gift-wrap because I can see the potential for re-using it in the future. Whenever the need to wrap a present arises, I first head to my paper stash to see what I already have on hand, which is what I did here. 

I had a beautiful artisan candle and a box of mini soaps that I wanted to give to a friend. When I’m giving natural products such as these, I like my packaging to have a bit of an organic and imperfect feel. For the box of soaps, I first wrapped the box in plain white paper. Next, I wrapped a strip of wrinkled green paper around the box, and then adhered a postcard in place. To finish, I wrapped twine around the box, and added a tag and dried greenery. For the candle, I took a piece of wrinkled white paper and crumpled it up even more for extra texture. Next, I flattened it and wrapped the box as you would any gift. I had a bit of that green paper left, so I layered that with a trimmed postcard and adhered it to the box. To finish, I attached dried greenery with a strip of washi tape.

Project

Christen Hammons is the Director of Publishing for Stampington & Company and editor-in-chief of Somerset Studio, Bella Grace, Field Guide to Everyday Magic, and GreenCraft. She lives in Orange County with her husband and their two rescue dogs.