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For Stella’s second birthday she received an easel.  Once we set the easel up and had the paints out Stella never stopped painting.  I had paintings hanging everywhere in the house and was out of space for the many more that were coming.  I did not want to throw them away so I needed to figure out what to do with them all.  Christmas was around the corner – so I decided I would use her art creations as my wrapping paper.  With some raffia and home made gift tags the presents looked wonderful and it was another gift around a gift.  That Christmas I received calls from some of the gift recipients asking me where I got my wrapping paper so I told them, others figured it out and had Stella’s artwork hanging in their home.  A tradition was started.  Now every year Stella’s uses her artist creativity and makes our wrapping paper.  The really nice thing is that the easel painting space is about the size needed for one shirt box.

This year Stella spent the last weekend creating and painting, but decided she wanted the floor to do her work and not the easel.  I love watching here create and seeing the outcome – no 2 sheets are ever the same – they may have the same theme, but they never look the same.

When wrapping the presents I try never to cut into the artwork itself, which at times makes the corners, etc a little more difficult, but it is worth it.  Instead of ribbon I use either natural raffia or red raffia and sometimes both.  For our gift tags, I invested in some scissors that cut with a design edge and using either construction paper or brown butcher paper cut the tags, using a hole punch I punch a hole in the corner and it is ready for the raffia.  We have both the traditional hole puncher and one that punches hearts.

I have some siblings that are many years younger than me and during one Christmas celebration my sister said by the time that she was ready for her own Christmas tree she would not have ornaments to decorate with- so another tradition was started the following year, that still continues.  For each of the children that we do gifts for an ornament is part of the packaging.  It is great fun picking out the ornament that is just right for the receiver of the gift.  I try to only get ornaments that are handmade, fair trade or support a cause.  I start giving the ornaments their very first Christmas – so by the time they are 18 they have at least 18 ornaments for their own tree or for decorating their home.

Stella is now old enough to start making her own gifts or make with my help, but the wrapping paper was and is a great way to have her involved in the holiday and start the tradition with her of handmade gift giving – she loves to do it and when the holiday gets close she asks if I need any wrapping paper and when can she start painting.  Sometimes we even paint together, which is always fun. For the smaller gifts I use old atlas pages to wrap those, along with boxes from gifts given to us – it is a rare thing for me to buy any wrapping essentials for the holiday.

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