‘Tis the season to be jolly… and throw away 108 million rolls of wrapping paper or 227,000 miles worth! and 40 million rolls of sellotape! How awful is this. Shocking. I think with all of the excitement that Christmas brings, it is easy to forget the real reasons of why we are giving presents. Because we love and care about those that we are gifting to. But we also care about our planet, and this can be done simultaneously.
I have tried to get this out early, so that hopefully most of you haven’t bought or wrapped your presents yet, and if you want to, then here are some tips for more eco-friendly gifting.
Re-cycled paper
I bought a roll for £1 in our local Range shop. I then decorated mine, but you could definitely leave it plain. I have done this in previous years but this year decided to try with some printing. See below on how I did this.
Newspaper
Or keep it even simpler, wrap with newspaper. You will most likely have some at home, or if not then a family member likely will. Simply wrap with twine and it looks so effective.
Decorations
Dried oranges, foraged items, name tags. I think if you try to keep to a theme then whatever you use will look effective. I tried to keep to red and gold. Gold stars printed onto the paper, red ribbon/twine and then with the foraged items red berries looked simple but pretty.
Fabric Wrapping or Furoshiki
Now, this is slightly more complicated! For me anyway. There are many youtube videos on this, (and they make it look very easy). I found that the best results was with a thin fabric. The idea of fabric wrapping is that you will either re-use the fabric yourself, to wrap another present, or the fabric may be part of the gift, eg a scarf, tea towel, handkerchief.
My attempt at Fabric Wrapping
How I decorated my brown paper
You will need:
- Brown Paper
- Potato or Carrot
- Ink pad
- Sharp knife
- Pen
Decide on the design that you would like to print, I kept it simple with a star. Then draw onto the vegetable the design. Now cut around it (carefully)!!! so that the design is what is standing out. So you cut away from the design. Like this…
Now blot (gently) the vegetable to try to remove any excess water, as this will stop it from absorbing the ink. Lay out the paper and start printing. Simply press the stamp firmly into the ink pad and then stamp onto the paper.
Repeat, in which every pattern you like, until fully covered. Leave to dry. I found mine dried really quickly. So as I finished the roll the start prints had already dried.
This was so quick to do, I did it whilst Freya sat and ate her lunch. And I think it looks really effective. I then tied the gifts with an assortment of twine and ribbons that I had. I avoided tape here as this cannot be recycled. Unless you buy biodegradable tape!
I hope you’ve found this blog post useful, and I hope it encourages you to try to be more mindful this Christmas when wrapping and gifting. If we all make small changes, it is one step closer to saving our beautiful planet.
Carly