We all want our gifts to stand out and be noticed over the holidays, so we often use special and expensive wrapping paper and ribbon. But every year we generate almost 5 million tons waste comprised of wrapping paper and shopping bags!
This activity can be used to create beautiful and useful homemade gift wrapping while showing your child how to help the planet by using recycled paper. Here's how to get started:
What You Need:
- Tissue paper (used)
- Edible food coloring
- Bowls
- Clothesline and clothes pins to dry the paper
- Newspapers to lay under the paper to catch any drips while drying
What You Do:
- Save tissue paper from gift bags, gifts or packing. Crinkle paper to achieve strong lines, but take care when opening or twisting the paper so that it doesn't tear.
- Take food coloring and dilute it with water. The less water the stronger the color will be. Use a different bowl for each color you would like to use.
- Twist the paper and dip the twists or wrinkles into the colors. Let the paper sit in the bowl and observe how the color seems to creep up the paper. This is an example of diffusion or osmosis. The folded or twisted areas will resist the color, creases and the top of the folds will take color more easily.
- Hang your designs over newspapers and allow to dry.
- Once dry, fold your paper carefully and use as needed.
You can also stamp brown paper bags or tissue paper to create unusual wrapping materials. While you are at it you might talk about handmade gifts that your family can create for giving.
Did You Know?
- Not every country uses wrapping paper. In Japan beautiful, reusable pieces of fabric called furoshiki are used to present gifts.
- The use of wrapping paper began to flourish in Victorian period, and only the wealthy could afford the elaborately printed and decorated wrappings and ribbons.
- Hallmark stumbled upon the modern wrapping paper market in 1917, when the usual red, white and green tissue paper sold out of one store a few days before Christmas. The store owner decided to put out sheets of decorative envelope liners, which began flying off the shelves and were the precursor to today's patterned wrapping paper.
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