Handmade Holiday Vol. 1

Handmade Holiday will be a bi-weekly feature through the Holidays giving you some fun easy thrifty ways to enjoy your holiday, the handmade way! Handmade Holiday will focus on packaging and simple gifting to make your holidays more meaningful, less stressful, and better for Mother Earth.

Simple tips to remember throughout the Handmade Holiday:

1} Use what you have. Don't have pretty baker's string? Use butcher's twine. No butcher's twine? Use yarn or embroidery floss. No, embroidery floss? What about dental floss? In college bookmaking we often used dental floss as a substitute for the waxed linen thread used in bookbinding. And if you want to get really creative, the scented kind already sort of smells like the holidays...

2} When giftwrapping, go on a hunt for all things of a similar color scheme. No red and green? All colors can become festive if you go with a single color scheme. Use that long forgotten orange stamp pad, that ugly orange ribbon you bought for some unbeknownst reason and a simple holiday stamp.

3} Just about anything can become wrapping paper. Newspaper, old grocery bags (paper & plastic), old fabric, leftover ugly wrapping paper turned inside out to show the white side.

Here's a simple pennant wrap idea I made using recycled kraft paper, a homemade rubber stamp, and some baker's string:

1} Cut a simple triangle shape out of an eraser. If you don't have an eraser, you could also use a wine cork, piece of foam, or makeup sponge.

2} Gather your stamp pads. I experimented using both several shades of green as well as just red and green. Yes, I've got that many stamp pads.....

3} Find your paper for your wrap and cut it to approximately the size needed to wrap your gift. Here, since my box was already nicely finished, I decided just to make a sleeve to wrap around it.

4} Stamp your triangle in a straight-ish line. Changing the angle around slightly will give it a presence that it's floating in air like a real pennant.

5} wrap your gift and tie with a thin string just above row of stamped pennants. You could also draw a petite line with a black pen for a cute look as well!

Tune in on Wednesday for some more fun ideas using die cut shapes!