No (new) paper Christmas wrap

Due to a combination of environmentalism, thriftiness, laziness, and creativity, I set myself a challenge this year: no unused wrapping paper for presents of giftees over the age of 10. The one exception is a gift of Matt's I wrapped before I made this resolution. The result of this challenge has been, interestingly enough, not only a lot of unusual Christmas wraps, but also a lot of fun Christmas art project time for Thomas. I did a lot of fairly obvious things (reuse bags and paper, etc), but these are my favorite projects so far:

• I used a glue stick to glue together extra handouts, printouts of talks, and miscellaneous interview material for this year. Then I put the white side up on Thomas art table before we painted the Christmas ornaments we made. The parts that weren't then covered with paint and glitter I drew simple Christmas shapes on, and Thomas scribbled them with marker. He was really excited about making gift wrap, and then wanted to wrap the presents. I think only my dad will be interested in my handouts, but office paper makes surprisingly neat packages.


• Last summer Thomas and I dyed a bunch of silk scarves with food coloring. They came out with an interesting marbled look (probably because I made a mistake: my favorite arts are the ones where mistakes turn out pretty). I tied a green one around my mom's photo book. She's a grandma, so this counts as an extra present (toddler art!). Then I used some leftover undyed ones to wrap my step-brother and step-mom's gifts, and attached a tag with the dyeing instructions. They were so much fun I might intentionally make some extra scarves this summer to use as gift wrap next year.


• An extra tote bag from my Germany conference for the gift purchased in Germany, a Chicago map tote bag for my mom's gift, and some extra stockings.