Bunch Family

Make great looking gifts from recycled materials and things you find around the house.

Wrapping Paper

For the paper itself, use old newspapers, tissue paper (from your recent purchases perhaps)  or blue prints. You can acquire old blue prints by calling up a local contractor. Pro tip: Make sure you use the Arts & Life or Style section of the newspaper — a murder-suicide headline really saps the Christmas spirit. All these techniques can also be applied to paper shopping bags.

Potato Prints:

Cut potato in half and cut out holiday shapes in relief. (This part is for the grownups) We suggest pine trees, holly berries and leaves, stars, ornaments, snowflakes, snowmen and standard geometric shapes.

Paint stamps with a brush, or dip into a paint-filled plate. Pro tip: Make a “stamp pad” by soaking a piece of felt in the paint plate  — this gives a crisper potato print.

Stamp potato all over paper. The key to good potato prints is pattern. Go nuts.

Alternatives to potato stamps:

Jean Van’t Hul aka The Artful Parent made wrapping paper with her daughters by rolling play-doh tools through paint. She also suggests checking out Daisy Yellow’s bubble wrap art. Paint bubble wrap with multiple paint colours and then stamp on paper in interesting patterns. Or haphazardly.

Crayon Chip:

While we’re all nostalgic for the potato print crafts of our past, we’re kinda blown away by this melted crayon-shaving idea from Momtastic (via ohdeedoh). Place a sheet of wax paper on ironing board. Then take tissue paper, newspaper or blue print paper and place on top of wax paper. With a kitchen peeler, shave crayons directly onto paper. Pro tip: create a palette using Color Trends and stick to those colours. Place another sheet of paper over top of crayon shavings and iron with the iron on its lowest setting. Place iron directly on paper and lift straight up in a dabbing motion. Momtastic says you will get wax on your iron. Just wipe it off.

Cards:

The ever-versatile potato stamp also makes a great card. Check out these cards from Kids Craft Weekly. Their “back of baking tray” cards are also pretty great. Make a scotch tape border on a baking sheet (Whatever size you want your design to be) and with a cotton swab, draw your design. Stamp the front of your card paper into the design. (Any study paper will do)

Buttons are also excellent card-making materials. Glue buttons into Christmas-y shapes onto the front of your card. We suggest trees, snowmen and stars. For trees, either stack buttons into a tree shape, or start with a green triangle and glue on button ornaments. We also like the idea of adding thread to the tops of button-ornaments, with or without a tree background.

Potato stamp photo by andrewacomb and button card photo by t0fugurl on Flickr