More Free
This year, I managed to wrap ALL of our holiday gifts for free. Here's how! My grandpa used to donate to a lot of charities and received a lot of flatfold wrapping paper assortments as "thanks" for his donation. Sure, they're a lot of unusual designs, but I don't mind. I took them and hung on to them.
In the interest of eco consciousness, I only boxed gifts when it was absolutely necessary. Boxes create waste, and you need more tissue paper and more paper on the outside, plus more tape! Because I was wrapping mostly small packages, all those smallish pieces of paper were just right.
I did have to wrap a few large boxes. Instead of tissue paper, which would have just been filler, I used newspaper. Okay, the newspaper wasn't entirely free, but heck, I had already used it for its intended purpose!
Some gifts needed a pretty piece of tissue paper. At Maggie's birthday this summer, a couple of friends went way overboard with beautiful tissue paper. I flattened out these pieces and saved them, so I used them for the gifts.
And for those few really large boxes that the wrapping paper didn't fit, I used.....vintage maps! I had snagged a couple of maps from Grandpa's for curiosity's sake. They made for perfect wrapping paper, and they definitely have a neat look that's different from the norm.
I feel all ecoconcious!
******
Everyone needs those few little office gifties and things. Our office pretty much exchanges small pretties; we have no official policy. For the guys I bring in treats, and for the ladies I made cute little wooden pins. I had a bag of wooden star cutouts, some paint, a bag of pin backs, and a handful of vintage buttons and other things. I made about 20 cute little pins; covering my knit group and my office ladies, and while they are tiny little gifts, they are useable and cute and didn't cost me anything (and won't be anything they have to figure out how to get rid of!).
******
My new kitten needed a collar, but she literally has a 5 inch neck. The VERY smallest collar I could find was 6 inches, and $8.99 to boot! For that fun custom tag engraving machine, they wanted $8 for the least expensive tag. HELLO? I had a little buckle that I had saved from something, and so I crocheted a cute little collar from washable sock yarn. It's stretchy enough so she can escape if she's caught but not so she can just take it off. And the pet store had DIY pet tags--a little plastic charm with a piece of paper in it that you could fill out and then place a waterproof sticker over. $3.50. When Miao outgrows her little collar, I can cut the current one off the buckle and create a new one--it only took me 15 minutes to make! And I saved myself around $14.
But I used a couple of those dollars to buy food for the shelter donation :-)
In the interest of eco consciousness, I only boxed gifts when it was absolutely necessary. Boxes create waste, and you need more tissue paper and more paper on the outside, plus more tape! Because I was wrapping mostly small packages, all those smallish pieces of paper were just right.
I did have to wrap a few large boxes. Instead of tissue paper, which would have just been filler, I used newspaper. Okay, the newspaper wasn't entirely free, but heck, I had already used it for its intended purpose!
Some gifts needed a pretty piece of tissue paper. At Maggie's birthday this summer, a couple of friends went way overboard with beautiful tissue paper. I flattened out these pieces and saved them, so I used them for the gifts.
And for those few really large boxes that the wrapping paper didn't fit, I used.....vintage maps! I had snagged a couple of maps from Grandpa's for curiosity's sake. They made for perfect wrapping paper, and they definitely have a neat look that's different from the norm.
I feel all ecoconcious!
******
Everyone needs those few little office gifties and things. Our office pretty much exchanges small pretties; we have no official policy. For the guys I bring in treats, and for the ladies I made cute little wooden pins. I had a bag of wooden star cutouts, some paint, a bag of pin backs, and a handful of vintage buttons and other things. I made about 20 cute little pins; covering my knit group and my office ladies, and while they are tiny little gifts, they are useable and cute and didn't cost me anything (and won't be anything they have to figure out how to get rid of!).
******
My new kitten needed a collar, but she literally has a 5 inch neck. The VERY smallest collar I could find was 6 inches, and $8.99 to boot! For that fun custom tag engraving machine, they wanted $8 for the least expensive tag. HELLO? I had a little buckle that I had saved from something, and so I crocheted a cute little collar from washable sock yarn. It's stretchy enough so she can escape if she's caught but not so she can just take it off. And the pet store had DIY pet tags--a little plastic charm with a piece of paper in it that you could fill out and then place a waterproof sticker over. $3.50. When Miao outgrows her little collar, I can cut the current one off the buckle and create a new one--it only took me 15 minutes to make! And I saved myself around $14.
But I used a couple of those dollars to buy food for the shelter donation :-)
posted by knittykat @ 1:50 PM
1 Comments:
At 6:11 AM,
Adie Kay said…
Yay Team Knitty! I remember as a kid, my mom used to save wrapping paper and IRON it to reuse and get rid of the creases. "Don't wreck the wrapping paper!" was a common call during b-days and Xmas. Guess who does it now? Me.
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