Eco-friendly and original gift-wrapping ideas

Fancy wrapping paper, boxes and bows add to the cost of a gift without adding value. Try these original and inexpensive ideas to make your gifts more personal, fun and memorable.

You probably have all kinds of paper around the house that you haven’t gotten around to recycling, all of which potentially make great gift wrapping for the right recipient. Try:

• Roadmaps to wrap graduation gifts or gifts for your favourite road warrior
• Sunday comics to wrap gifts for children
• Cut-outs from magazine pages pasted onto white paper or brown wrapping paper for birthdays, weddings and housewarming gifts
• Sheets of music or pages from old books for the musician or writer in your life
• Calendar pages of seasonal photography to personalize a birthday or holiday gift
• Fabric remnants, old shirts and t-shirts that can be tied in interesting ways so you won’t need ribbons and bows
• Use an online word cloud generator and print off a colourful, personalized wrapper for your gift.
• Brown paper grocery bags or lunch bags make a clean, neutral "earthy" background for rustic ribbons and foliage and contrast well with colourful gift tags and collages

During the holidays, it seems like every store is all out of gift boxes. Most of these smart alternatives don’t need any wrapping and many can be a thoughtful part of the gift itself.

• Empty tissue boxes make fun containers for a series of fun, small gifts. For a shower, for instance, tie small gifts or gift cards at intervals along a ribbon and lower them carefully into the opening of the tissue box. Tie your tag to the end of the ribbon and let the recipient pull out the gifts by pulling on the ribbon.

• Colanders, bowls, baskets and buckets can be part of your gift and don’t need any embellishment at all. Crafters are always looking for storage for their supplies.
• Wrap a gift of craft supplies in empty snack or tennis ball canisters covered with shelf liner, wallpaper remnants or scrap fabric – they will be used long after your gift is gone as storage for everything from beads to batteries.
• Hardcover books from a garage sale can be turned into classy boxes by stiffening the outside edges of the pages with glue and cutting a cavity into the pages.
• Old birthday or holiday cards can be repurposed into beautiful boxes for smaller gifts; look online for templates and instructions.

If your wrap is plain (like brown paper), try something unusual to top off your gift, such as:

• A rainbow handful of uninflated balloons tied in the middle with another balloon
• Several colours of yarn wrapped around the gift or made into pompoms
• A monogram made by cutting your recipient’s initial out of any colourful paper and mounting it on cardboard
• Silk flowers and foliage
• An arrangement of jewel-coloured hard candies or candy canes
• If you keep a roll of duct tape handy, you have everything for an easily made, self-adhesive ribbon and bow.

When you skip the generic themed gift wrap paper, ribbons and bows, your original ideas for gift wrap will be appreciated as more personal, more creative and more expressive. By reusing non-traditional materials, you can also reduce the cost and the environmental impact of your gift.