Innovative ways to reuse gift wrap
After the festive season, we are often left with lots of leftover wrapping paper. In fact, the UK uses 227,000 miles of wrapping paper each year, which is an awful lot!
When you are excitedly buying presents, it can be easy to misjudge how much paper you will need. And if you are busy opening presents, you may chuck it away without a second thought.
If you didn’t think about this last year, there will be lots of occasions where you can test it out, including birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day and Easter.
Take a look of some innovative ways to reuse all of your wrapping paper.
Make bunting
Gift wrap is the perfect material for making bunting to decorate your home. All you need to do is cut them into a triangle shape with holes in, then feed the string through so that it can be hung on walls, windows, fireplaces and doorways. If you want to add a bit of durability to them, it’s a good idea to stick the paper onto measured triangle cardboard cut-outs, which can be made from old moving boxes or even cereal boxes.
If you’re feeling especially creative, why not try making them in different shapes or add customisation like sparkles, wording or glitter?
Use on handmade cards
Gift wrap is perfect for adding a little detail to your handmade cards. For example, you could use it to add petals to a flower, use the ‘happy birthday’ or other celebratory wishes, or if it has people or animals on, they could even be stuck onto your cards. This is where you can be as creative as you want, the world is your oyster!
Shred it
Shredded paper can be used for lots of different things and a particularly useful one is packaging delicate items. You can also plant the shredded paper around trees to mulch them, which will help them to grow. One thing to remember if you’re using it for this purpose, you will need to layer the paper in between layers of actual mulch. You will also want to avoid glossy papers and full colour sheets of gift wrap as they won’t biodegrade quite as well.
Get creative with the kids
Why not use this as an opportunity to get creative with the kids? You could use your old gift wrap for paper mâché projects, or even use them to decorate boxes, hampers (great for Easter!) or in a scrapbook. We’re sure that the kids would love to try these activities out, especially when doing it as a family!
Do you have any other creative or innovative ways to reuse gift wrap? We’d love to hear them so that we can try them out!