Ten uses for used wrapping paper

As Christmas approaches countless rolls of paper are being bought and ribbons are being tied around boxes of all shapes and sizes. By lunch time on the 25th (earlier if there are young kids in the household), most of this beautiful material will end up in large plastic trash bags, waiting on the sidewalk for the big old garbage truck to drive by. You CAN avoid this waste... just read on.

Step 1: Decorative shipping stuffing

This works best with the double patterned kind of wrapping (with color on both sides) but it also looks great with regular wrapping paper. Save all your wrapping paper, even the most crinkled and ripped pieces, fold them up neatly for storage, then when you need some nice packing material, shred it all and stuff your package. This works better with old shredders which make long strips of paper, rather than the confetti, because the smaller pieces tend to make more mess -- but either will do a fine job protecting your fragile items during shipping.

You can also use this as decorative stuffing for gift baskets or other gifts like the scented bath salts I made for all my friends and relatives a couple years ago.

Comments

[TuttleDB]

These are great ideas! I would love to see how to make those ornaments in the first picture.

Had to laugh about your illegal fur coats. :)

[porcupinemamma]

Lots of excellent ideas. Thanks for posting ! BTW, would you happen to know where I might find templates for the figures in the paper doll idea? (It was my favourite) ;0)

[belsey]

Sorry, no template available... I just drew those on a piece of card stock, cut them out and colored them... But I'm sure you would be able to find something online if you don't feel like sketching figures yourself.

[susanrm]

And to make the clothes, just draw around the bodies and include little rectangular tabs you can use to fold over and make the clothes stick on. (I too am a DIY paper doll veteran.) :-)

[susanrm]

This is terrific! I love the ideas from the shredder. Another great use for wrapping paper is embellishing altered books and/or scrapbooks. You can pay so much money for nice paper for doing this.

[belsey]

I updated my instructable to include your idea... thank you so much for posting your comment!

[susanrm]

:-D

[Diane056]

'We were a little unsure about anatomy'... loved that, it made me smile. I too made do with scraps of whatever was available to dress my paperdolls and also my regular dolls. I agree that the commercial paper dolls and kits were so not the point. My Mom drew well, she always would draw wonderful 20s and 30s style females and their clothing . She was born in 1923 so she drew her dolls as she did when SHE did them for herself and her sisters. Great memories of her doing those drawings whenever I asked. Thanks for that mental jar:)

[ChrysN]

Great ideas. I love the trick with the paper shredder!

[artfulann]

Love it! You could be my twin I think.

[sunshiine]

Very nice! Thanks for sharing!
Sunshiine