Wrapping paper

I love wrapping presents and I love all the little bits and pieces that you can buy to make presents look beautiful, ribbons, doilies, bows and tags and the shinier the better.  As a rule I always have a box of supplies that I keep on hand for present wrapping and an assortment of wrapping paper for all occasions but sometimes you just don't have that perfect wrapping paper or as in today's case you run out and I have no intentions of taking my two rambunctious children anywhere near a shop today so what do you do?

DIY wrapping paper, that's what.

(Stamps: Fiskers- Kids Birthday, Fiskers Ink by Steph- Skin And Bones)

(Ink: Versa Color- Cardinal, Fiskers- High Density Blue)

Kinda cool huh, I will be honest this totally works better with smaller presents or if you have bigger stamps but seeing as this paper is for a 6 year old pirate loving boy I hardly doubt he will be looking at anything more than the fact that he has a present and it has skulls on it.

I always have a roll of brown paper and white/cream kids painting paper on hand just for this reason and you know what it really is the simplest of tasks and tasks under 5 minutes to make your very own personalised wrapping paper.

 I decided to do up an example of just how easy it really is, all I used for this paper was one set of stamps, a couple of different ink colours, an acrylic block and paper it really is that easy.

It does not matter what order you stamp in or how straight you stamp, with a random pattern like this you can get as messy as you like.  I also like to tape the corners down on the surface that I am making the paper on, when paper has been stored in a roll it tends to curl up and it just means that I can use both hands rather than using one hand to keep the paper flat where I stamp. 

There you go all you need is a small piece of ribbon which I usually pick up from Spotlight for 70c for 3 metres, curling ribbon or raffia and a bow, I buy my bows at Christmas time in big bags, they only have a few colours in the mix but a bag will last all year and they are usually under $4 and come is so many different sizes.