On the tenth day of Craft-Mas the crafting gods gave to me, wrapping paper garland oh so thrifty:
And I ended up hanging the garland in the doorway between the dining room and the parlor (on both sides of the doorway).
This was definitely one of those projects that ended up nothing like what I intended it to…well maybe a little bit. You see, I kept seeing all these really pretty paper garlands on Pinterest and wanted to try my hand at crafting a strand for Christmas. Initially, I had planned to purchase a dozen or so sheets of fancy scrapbook paper, like the glittery ones I’ve been using for many of the previous Craft-Mas projects. But at $2 a pop, that would make for some expensive garland. After spending an evening wrapping Christmas presents, I found I had a bunch of these left over:
Those are all the scraps of wrapping paper that’s left over after wrapping. You know, the pieces that are just a smidge too small to wrap a gift. Anyway, I tend to gravitate toward the premium quality wrapping paper at Target. I know it’s a splurge at $5.00 a roll, and it’s smaller size doesn’t get me very far in wrapping, but it’s my guilty pleasure in life. That and grande non-fat white peppermint mocha lattes at Starbucks. Mmm…mmm…good! Ironically, I can get them both at Target…my third guilty pleasure in life behind premium grade wrapping paper and Starbucks lattes of course. My love affair with the higher quality wrapping paper is twofold: One, it’s much thicker and durable than the cheap stuff meaning less ripping and tearing midway through wrapping up a gift and two, it’s often much more glittery and you know I have a thing for all things glittery. Thus, why not use this stuff to craft my paper garland rather than the uber expensive scrapbook paper?! It’s just as pretty, just as glittery, and it was just going into the recycling bin had I not re-purposed it.
So I got to work. My supplies included white card stock, 1-1/2″ paper punch, Mod Podge, wrapping paper scraps, fishing line, glue gun, and scissors. The first step was to punch a bunch of circles out of the card stock.
Then I glued the card stock circles to the wrapping paper by brushing on the Mod Podge glue for a solid adhesion. After the glue dried (only about fifteen to twenty minutes), I cut them out using the scissors.
This process produced a very high quality and efficient (using the optimal amount of wrapping paper and leaving few scraps) set of wrapping paper chips. However, it was a slow process. Enter wrapping paper chip making process number two: gluing the wrapping paper directly to the card stock using the Mod Podge.
You have to be careful with this process not to get air bubbles or folds in the wrapping paper. And also make sure that you spread a sufficient amount of glue, covering the entire surface. After the glue dried, I used the circle punch and cut out as many chips as I could from the card stock.
In the end I was left with quite a bit of chips. I felt like I was playing poker with Santa Claus and his reindeer. I was totally winning!
With my chip pile in tow and a heated up glue gun, I went to work gluing the chips to the fishing line.
I used a sandwich technique for the gluing. I took two chips of the same color/pattern, added glue to the back of one chip, attached the fishing line, and then smooshed the second chip onto it. It’s like the wrapping paper chips were the bread and the fishing line was the meat. I just kept repeating this process, alternating colors, making a very long, continuous garland. When it was done, I pushed some tacks into the trim between the dining room and the parlor to use as anchors, and just kept wrapping the garland around the trim. This is the view into the parlor.
And this is the view from the other side, from the parlor into the dining room/kitchen.
I adore the end result of this project. So much that I’m requesting that those receiving presents from me this year save their wrapping paper and return it to me (or else) so I can make some more of this garland for other doorways. Consider yourselves warned.
Pssst…Sadly, Chraft-Mas is coming to a close. I know, you’re all so sad right?! But for those of you who miss our home improvement projects, have no fear, we’ll be back with a vengeance next week. We’ve got some doozies for you in the next few months so stay tuned!
