Wrapping Paper Reuse

Don't have any wrapping paper on hand? This is the perfect opportunity for you to tune into your creativity and reuse old newspapers and magazines to make unique and fun gift wrap for your gifts. It's a great activity for kids and teaches them another great way to live more sustainably. Reusing instead of purchasing new wrapping paper conserves resources from the gasoline used to ship the paper to the store, to the trees used to make the paper. And if it's more sustainable then it's more economical which means more money for your family.

There are as many ways to use newspapers and magazines to wrap presents as their are pages in the newspaper or magazine.  I've seen presents wrapped in the tradional Sunday comics and I've also seen elaborately wrapped gifts where the newspaper was used to make big bows.  The possibilites are as varied as the imagination of the person wrapping the gift. After the fun of opening gifts is finished, recycle the paper just like you would with regular wrapping paper.

I was in a hurry and had to wrap my niece's presents for her 15th birthday. I searched all over the house for some fun newspaper, but had just dropped off the recycling and was out of luck. I found a bag that didn't make it to the recycling center and in it was an old Rolling Stone magazine that had seen better days and couldn't be saved as a collector's item. I started flipping through the pages and was thrilled to find some bright and fun advertisements and pictures.

I wrapped the presents with the colorful pages and cut pictures from the articles and advertisements to paste on the first layer of wrapping to add depth and to make the packages a little more fun and festive. My niece got more excited over the picture of the Beatles on the outside of her present than she did over the kitchy notecards they were concealing.

Wrapping these gifts was a lot of fun, and they looked so pretty lying together that I just had to take a picture.