Green Options

I’ve given handmade gifts to family and friends for years now, but I never before really cared all that much about how they were wrapped.

My biggest accomplishments were wrapping a box in the comics page from the newspaper (I know–how original) or in a brown paper bag turned inside out to hide the logo.

If I was feeling extra-inspired, perhaps I’d have my girls draw decorations on the brown paper bag or newspaper, but that was about it.

This year, however, I’m feeling inspired to make my gifts’ wrappings as beautiful as the gifts themselves. Perhaps it’s because my budget is tighter than ever (not only am I crafting all my gifts, but I’m crafting them solely from STASH), and so I want the outside to be extra-pretty to make up for it, or perhaps it’s just a new outlet for my crafty mindset.

Either way, you can play, too!

Sometimes the simplest thing is the best.

Okay, the simplest thing is the best thing nearly always in my house, but even if you generally go the elaborate route, taking a break to do a few simple tasks–say, make some easy-peasy Christmas ornaments–can actually be really refreshing.

These Christmas ornaments, made from repurposed or recycled papers (like my Christmas cards), are extremely simple to make. You can freehand them or use cookie cutters, laminate them or simply sandwich cardboard in between, embellish them or leave them plain–whatever you want with whatever you have.

The key to giving these ornaments big impact is to choose papers that are extremely meaningful to you. Were there a couple of extra photos leftover when you had your Christmas pictures printed? Is your daughter’s report card cute but at the end of a reeeeeally long to-be-scrapbooked queue? Here’s what to do:

Whether you are a hoarder of pretty papers or you take your art materials at random from the recycling bin, the holidays are an excellent time to use up the little bits and scraps of paper that tend to otherwise get lost or discarded.

At our house, our holidays are primarily handmade (except for Santa, of course–Santa’s been shopping the deals all year long), and I try not to buy any new materials when making my gifts and other projects, either.

AND I do almost all of my crafting with two little kids either actively helping, or at least in tow, so my stuff can’t be super-complicated or destroyed by the input of a five-year-old.

Hence the introduction of these fun little scrap paper cards, which are easy and satisfying AND just about free to make.

And no, I’m not talking “old-school” like when you were in school, I’m talking “old-school” like Ma Ingalls.

Paper dolls have always been an exercise in upcycling and creative re-use. You think Ma Ingalls bought special fancy paper to make dolls for Laura and Mary? Or cut their paper dolls out of a Dover paper doll book?

Hell, no she didn’t! Seriously, this is the same woman who had her kid carrying around a corn cob wrapped in a handkerchief as a doll.

My kids are pretty gullible, but I don’t think even I could pull that one off. However, after finishing reading Little House in the Big Woods together (one chapter a night, followed by one episode of Meerkat Manor on Netflix, followed by me sitting in the dark and goofing around on the Internet while streaming Bright Eyes on Pandora until I hear two sets of snores), the girls and I have been on a huuuuuge paper doll kick, and although they can sucker me into breaking out the scrapbook paper once in a while, we generally kick it old-school with the following SWEET recycled papers:

If you have some ugly old Christmas cards on hand, it’s an awesome fix to make them over with fabric scraps.

Even if you don’t have card one, however, you can still send out a full roster of holiday greetings to your loved ones.

With some plain cardstock or other papers of similar weight (think glossy magazine pages, or the covers of thick catalogues or phone books, etc.), you can use your same pretty fabric scraps to make a completely new card that’s completely you.

And if you have something else awesome for embellishment–vintage buttons, leftover sequins, extra beads–even better!

Here’s how:

My little girlies and I are participating in a handmade card swap with some other families through Kids Craft Weekly, and and I’ve been using the activity both to kick-start the Christmas card crafting for our own family and friends and to inspire my own paper crafting.

My goals are to incorporate recycled materials into all our work, and to come up with some card-making ideas that are engaging and enjoyable for the children, that utilize our creativity, and that look nice whether completed by a preschooler or an adult.

And I have to have a lot of ideas, because preschoolers won’t do more than a couple of copies of any one thing before they are done and DONE!

Yep, I’ve come up with a couple of misfires, but the collaged window card is a good go-to activity. It looks good with anything–labels from soup cans, pages torn from ratty old books, wrapping paper, scrapbook paper, newspaper–and it looks equally good whether it’s done by a five-year-old or a 33-year-old.

Well, okay…usually my five-year-old’s looks way better.

One of my favorite things about working with all kinds of vintage papers is the way in which a unique paper can completely change a project for the better.

For instance, you could make a serviceable bookmark out of any piece of cardstock, but that’s all that you’d have in the end–a serviceable bookmark. But make this same bookmark out of the cover from your favorite (though now sadly scratched) vinyl record, or the box that your favorite cereal or pizza comes in, and you’ve got a personal, original, graphically outstanding bookmark.

And it’s still serviceable.

It’s an old-school way of creating an image, perhaps reminiscent of junior high science projects on one of those lucky days when you got to hold class outside.

Or maybe it reminds you of your undergrad years, spending hours in the darkroom in the basement of the union, a hobby that you gave up a few years later when you got pregnant and the idea of the chemicals started to skeev you out.

Or does it remind you of how you totally want to learn to do gocco or screen printing, but it seems kind of hard and requires more equipment thn you have the money for?

Well rejoice, friends, because this project requires only special paper and the sun, and it can make some surprisingly sophisticated prints. Here’s how:

So far I’ve only done crafty green reviews of books, everything from Weekend Sewing to the Crafty Chica. But, and perhaps this is only because our public library is AWESOME and lets me check out feature DVDs and all the new computer games and order pretty much every single obscure crafts book that I ask them for, I also enjoy trying out the large number of crafty software programs that exist. Some of these are good, and some are crappy.

The Form Wild software series is good.

The Form Wild series is a collection of CD software, and each CD contains a collection of three-dimensional animal cut-outs. The files pull up as Adobe Acrobat Reader files, and you can save them to your computer so that you don’t have to reinsert the CD each time you want to use the files.

I don’t know how or when it happened, but kids’ birthdays somehow seem to be an open invitation for non-stop excess. I consider myself an environmentalist, for instance, and yet for the past few years I’ve made a shopping trip every summer specifically for paper plates and napkins and plastic cups just for my children’s birthday party. The plates are biodegradable and the napkins are compostable, sure, and we do shrink plastic projects with the cups after we wash them, but still—yikes! And consider that just one example of the horrors that birthday party planning can wreak upon a heretofore budget-minded, eco-friendly family.

This year we’re trying for a more eco-friendly, as well as less expensive, birthday celebration. And we’re starting with the invitations—DIY, kid-created from recycled materials or from stash, and reflective of the simple and casual affair that we’re hoping to host this year.

If you’re in need of your own birthday party invitations or invitations to anything, here are some good ideas for simple, DIY invites you and your kids can create for yourselves:

My girls and I tend to craft with scrapbook paper often enough that I buy it when it’s on sale, but not often enough that I tend to use up all the paper that I’ve bought. Coincidentally, I also love photography, long to display my photos more around the house, and loathe store-bought photo frames–it just seems like I’ve sold, donated, given away, or thrown out enough photo frames over my lifetime for various reasons, you know?

Here’s another stash-busting project that I’ve been working hard on this week: covering recycled cardboard with pretty stash scrapbooking paper to use as wall photo frames around the house. The benefits of these photo frames are that they’re cheap, light and easy to mount without a lot of hardware, amenable to a plethora of modifications that will allow you to match your room or express your personality, and quick to make, letting you get as quickly as possible to the point of the project: getting your beautiful artwork out there on your walls.