by Natasa Shepherd

Created on: July 23, 2009   Last Updated: December 12, 2010

Taking a greener approach to something like gift wrapping is not only good for our environment, and our pockets, it will also bring out the creative side of you. You can make quality time with your children out of this as well since there are plenty of gift giving occasions year round.

We know that wrapping gifts with alternatives to the pricey gift wrap is inexpensive but people don't realize that it does not, by any means, have to come across as cheap! Instead you could be the artistic one who's skill and craftiness everyone admires.

The ways to gift wrap presents without spending cash and killing any more trees are endless. You can reuse the wrapping material you already have or create wrap from non conventional methods.

Using pages from the magazines to wrap gifts is a great way to go. Everyone has random magazines and tons of papers lying around the house that are most likely collecting dust. Look through them and you'll find that they have cool looking pages, it doesn't matter if it's an advert or a photo shoot. Test try wrapping a book up in one of them, it comes out quite nice. Make sure the wrap is appropriate for a recipient, you don't want to wrap your guys video game with something that has pretty butterflies on it, or that little girls hair set wrapped up with a cool biker dude on it.

Here are a few quick samples:

- This One was actually filled with chocolates as a small Valentines day gift. It was made with a square of scrap booking paper found amongst other crafts stuff, piece of old rope, lip sticker from few Valentines ago, scrap heart bead and a random tag I found and painted.

- This is a page from a photo shoot I believe, the golden part is pants and the rest might be a couch! Add some ribbon if you can find and voila!

- The IT LIST is great, especially if the gift is beauty or fashion oriented.

- Another very cute one.

All of these were made by using the pages of just one magazine, instead of gift wrap. News paper could look really cool as gift wrap but it is better to stick to magazines as their ink wont smudge and smear all over the place. Another great idea is getting printer paper (this works for bigger gifts too as you can tape the pieces together) and painting it yourself. Paper bags and plain manila rope also do well. Wrap the gift up into the paper bag, use the string to tie it instead of the bow and stick an interesting looking branch or flower under it on the top.

Something as simple as just a cardboard box with a ribbon can look very classy.

There are a lot of cool shaped candy boxes out there, you can have them emptied and cleaned then painted and they come out amazing as gift boxes. If you are more crafty or if you know how to sew and have some fabric (be it store bought meant for crafts or a top that you don't wear anymore) you can also sow gift wrap. This works especially good with bottled gifts, or smaller ones for which you can sow gift baggies.

However you decide to wrap your gift without using any gift wrap make sure that it compliments either the present or the recipient of it in some way. The point is to make use of what you already have lying around, and be creative with it, rather than going out and buying more stuff and creating more waste.

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