Its a Christmas wrap!

Christmas Wrapping

I love spending some time around the holidays making wrapping paper. It is a good way to get into the Chrissie spirit, entertain the kids, and to give your gifts a truly unique touch.

Wrapping paper can be made on lots of materials, paper, newspaper, butcher paper, tissue paper, or fabric. This year I have used a big offcut of print paper I had lying around, and I have tried a wax resist effect.

Sticking to the classic Christmas colours, I collected a bunch of green crayons and started by covering the paper with drawings of Christmas motifs, I stuck to three easy ones, a candy cane, tree, and star. Try turn it into a pattern, repeating the motifs, and making sure you press hard on the crayons so the resist effect works really well. The kids should absolutely be doing this step, a group of them working together even better.

Now mix up some watercolour paints or just water down some regular acrylic paint. I used a sponge to spread the paint, and kids will also find a sponge easier to cover this large area, but a paintbrush will also work.

 On half of mine I folded the paper into a kind of concertina and taped it to the floor so I got a stripy effect with the paint, on the other half I sponged the paint in circles. Try let the kids choose an idea for painting their wallpaper instead of just covering edge to edge. 

 Let the paint dry, and then the wrapping paper is ready to use- unless of course you want to add a splash of glitter to jazz it up!

While you have the scissors out wrapping gifts, go and rifle through your recycling bin, I am sure you and the kids will be able to find some amazing materials and textures to make some cute gift cards for your pressies. 

Christmas is the perfect occasion to be celebrating the beauty of hand-made and things created thoughtfully with love!

How about making that wrapping this weekend – knock that one off your to-do list.

Until next time!

Tracy x