Homemade wrapping paper

Hi Crafters,

thanks for all of your good wishes, for our family health. I really appreciate that you care. Times are so careless in many respects, it's good to see that in the card making community it's different.

My girls and I visited my mother-in-law today and her son spoke a word or two with her doctor, so things are a bit clearer now. It's been no stroke like we feared. She will recover and is already feeling better again, though she's by far not up to her usual self. We're all very relieved and hope that she'll be back by Christmas eve (in Germany we celebrate on the 24th, not the 25th).


I also made some progress today with my preparations. After work and the hospital visit, my girls and I went on a longish Christmas shopping trip to the supermarket, to get all things that needn't be  bought at the last minute. And then we spent all evening creating our own wrapping papers and wrapping the most urgent presents, those that need to go in the mail. 

The first one is for my Mum. I wrote Merry Christmas all over the paper at a diagonal, with a black calligraphy pen. Then I traced the words messily with a normal silver gel pen, to make it more festive. I really do like how it turned out, even though I usually don't like my own handwriting much.

This next gift is for a 5 year old girl, so I picked one of my pre-made tags and matched the colors on the paper to it. I cut a piece of paper to fit the gift, wrapped it the way I wanted it, but without glueing it down. Then I traced a curly line with a pencil and flattened out the paper again, to stamp and color the Christmas lights. That was a bit tricky, because the paper absorbs the alcohol markers a lot more than the cardstock I usually use, so I had to make sure not to color too close to the lines. I think I really would like it better without the bow, but I needed something to hold tha candy cane...

The third gift is for her older brother, so I chose a blue-green tag. Not wanting to do the lights again, I chose the Lawn Fawn snowflake set and aranged all the snowflakes except the negative one on my stamp press and stamped them all over the paper in blue ink. I love how well that went. Those snowflakes are so playful. 
When I had it all wrapped up, I realized I forgot part of the gift, so I packed that in a piece of white paper and stamped a single blue snowflake on top, to set it apart from the main present. Then I tucked in the little piece below the candy cane.

The forth paper was created by my daughters, with a lot of fuzz and discussion. I didn't want to cover too much of the design, because I really like how the stars turned out, so uneven and sketchy. So I didn't add a bow but only a small snowflake to hold the tag.

There's more to come, but for today I am done. Tomorrow the girls will spend the day with their Dad and Grandpa, so I'll be free to really get back in schedule - hopefully.


Have a great time
Ela



Challenges:
Come and get it: Merry Christmas
Pile it on: #49 Anything goes Christmas
That craft place: Christmas
A crafty mess: #2 Anything goes Christmas