This past weekend I went to a bridal shower. It’s wedding season during the “wedding years” for me, so I’ve been going to quite a few these days. It’s hard not to notice the tremendous amount of waste that these various occasions produce, from the disposable plates and cups to the rolls of wrapping paper crumpled up and thrown away. It’s not my event, so I don’t fixate on the things that are out of my control, but rather focus on the one thing I can change: my gift.
In my personal opinion, I don’t believe in giving a donation to a charity in someone else’s name, or giving them a green gift they won’t use, because it’s not what they want. I usually get what’s on the registry because I know it’s what the person wants and it’s certainly less likely to wind up in the dumpster, right?
The way I’ve been trying to have less of an environmental impact is in the way I package my gift. I usually try to reuse any bridal-like gift bags I get because I know they’ll get reused again and again. Well, the bridal shower was approaching and I had used them all up, so now what?
Since this was the shower of a good friend who is well aware of my eco-ways, I decided to try something new. It’s kind of fun to challenge yourself with only using recycled items to wrap a gift. I wrapped the present in brown paper packing material, and THEN, I made some paper roses! I had to do something to make it more of a bridal-type present so I used this brown bag paper rose tutorial from The Hostess with the Mostess blog and came up with this:
As a modification to the tutorial, I did my rose spiral outline with a pink highlighter to give the roses a pink edge. I also outlined the leaves and bent them a little bit. I secured everything with a little scotch tape (but am searching for a better method).
I was really pleased with how it came out, but wanted to get others’ opinions. They were all actually really positive and said it looked great. I think my friend appreciated the time that went into the flowers (an hour or so). An eco-victory overall! What do you think? I’d love to hear other great ideas for gift wrapping. Also, check out my past holiday post on reusable cloth bags.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Beautifully done! I write a blog about gift wrapping (http://www.thegiftedblog.com) and love to see people share their ideas. I think your wrap turned out very personalized and warm. It’s down to earth but still totally appropriate for the occasion.
Thanks for sharing this!
Charissa
What a great idea and the package looks beautiful! You could adapt this to many occasions from a child’s birthday to Christmas. Nice job!!
and it looked awesome
so talented!