By Guest Blogger Marcela De Vivo
After a holiday party or birthday, what are you to do with the piles of wrapping paper? After a particularly bountiful party, you might find yourself filling multiple Hefty bags with the stuff. And what a waste! Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to go in the trash (or at least, recycling).
There are a lot of uses for old wrapping paper—it could even be the answer to revitalizing your home. Refresh old furniture, add pops of colour and even refinish your walls—it can all be done with used wrapping paper!
Use as contact paper
With a little extra elbow grease, you can use excess wrapping paper in place of contact paper—use especially decorative wrapping paper to line your drawers. One fun idea is to line all the drawers in your dresser with mismatched prints—this will give character and a sense of whimsy to even the most mundane underwear drawer.
You can also use it for similar projects—for example, you could wrap your paper around an old tin and make a pencil jar! Or, line a drink tray for a quirky finish. You could even use it to add interest and wrap your journal or textbooks.
Decoupage!
Who doesn’t love decoupage? Decoupage is a great way to personalize your small furniture. Cut out pictures or patterns from your wrapping paper and create your own unique collage on a bedside table, desk—whatever suits you best! You could even decoupage personalized trays—the creative possibilities are nearly infinite.
Get organized!
Here, you can reuse your old wrapping paper and old shoeboxes. Shoeboxes are the perfect size for storage, but you don’t want old Aerosoles or Steve Madden logos around your house—it would look like clutter. Instead, you can decorate your old boxes with your wrapping paper in a manner that’s budget-friendly, chic and organized!
Frame it
If you have some especially beautiful wrapping paper, you can frame it for a quirky wall hanging. It’ll give your walls an interesting look—and depending on the paper you use, the effect can be graphic, cute, colorful or all of the above.
Make your own streamers
You can make some DIY streamers by cutting shapes out of your wrapping paper and hang them on strings. Metallic wrapping paper looks incredibly chic, as it reflects light in interesting patterns.
At your kids next birthday party, use all the leftover wrapping papers to make streamers!
Make an interesting wall texture!
In addition to repurposing your wrapping paper, there are also a lot of great projects you can do with extra tissue paper. You can even use tissue paper as a funky and unique wallpaper— it gives your walls an antique appearance, and it can cover almost anything unsightly on your walls or ceiling.
So, there you have it! No more wasted heaps of beautiful wrapping paper—now you have heaps of DIY and fun instead. Now you can make your living room as colorful as Anthropologie!
Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer from California whose writing covers a range of DIY projects for the home as well as for kids. She also writes about health, marketing and tech. Follow on on Google+, Facebook and Twitter for more tips!
