M is for Making Things (for Christmas)

Do you want to learn how to make some cool gift bows and be all green and recycle-ly in the process?

My eldest daughter is the wrapping queen here. She loves wrapping presents and keeps threatening to hire herself out to wrap other people's presents at this time of year. (Actually her skills are in great demand around the place where she is shamelessly lent out to various family members).

So last weekend she came home from her holiday research intern-ship with plans to make Christmas goodies having spent her spare time during the week hunting down cheap, innovative and quirky wrapping ideas and tutorials. A roll of sticky tape, some scissors and a stack of old magazines later, these were the result. She thoroughly enjoyed her weekend and everyone in the family had a go at making some. The tutorial for how to make this is included at the end of the post.

Chrissy Colours

The eldest daughter had posted me the link to this photo tutorial from 100 Layer Cake on my Facebook timeline, with the comment: "How about we try making these too!! (Wrapping! Yay!!). This is a tidier adaptation of the original idea on the Whole Living site. So dig out your old magazines and get making. We found it works best if you chose pages which are basically pictures and minimal text on both sides. Apologies for the formatting here. If I make it smaller, its too hard to read.

Instructions (I've added the conversions to centimetres)

Step 1: Cut the page lengthwise into nine 2 cm (3/4-inch) thick strips of heights shown: Three at 28cm inches, three at 25 cm (10 inches), two at 23 cm (9 inches), and one at 8 cm (3 1/2 inches).

Step 2: Twist each strip to form loops at both ends. Make a circle out of the smallest.

Step 3: Secure the ends with a piece of double-sided tape. Ordinary sticky tape works OK too. Just make little sticky tape loops.

Step 4: Layer and stick, starting with the longest strips. End with the circle in the centre.