Made A Start

 Look ma, no tape!

 

I kid you not.....I have decided to go "tapeless" this year in the wrapping department and thus far I have to say I love it! My inspiration came from this post over Dottie Angel way. I too have oodles and oodles of magazines hanging about and thought how lovely it would be to put their pages to use as gift bags just like she did.  

 

 Unlike Dottie Angel, however, I am not a big fan of tape. It's either too shiny or too drab, it often sticks to itself and creates havoc with my patience, and sometimes it even smells. One of my least favorite parts of wrapping presents is in fact the balancing act of attempting to rip off a length of tape while folding and  holding the paper in place. And yet, for all the sticky malevolence it displays during this process, it's inability to hold bows and tags in place three days down the road is incomprehensible.

 

Thread, on the other hand, is my friend. We work and play well together and so it seemed quite logical to team up this year and try stitching the gifts into their wrappings.

 

 The magazine pages recycled quite nicely into gift bags by simply zipping up some zig zag stitches along the edges.

 

 Even more exciting was the discovery that I could go "tagless" as well by writing my messages here, there, and everywhere directly on the packages.

 

 For those gifts a bit too large for the standard magazine page I turned to some postal paper I had on hand, "appliqued" it with a few clippings appropriate to the gift, and zipped it up tidy. The bigger one here is for dear hubby and you can bet it has something to do with Paris inside!

 

 Again, no tags required.

 

While I'm sure there will be some challenges ahead I was heartened to discover a great length of burlap leftover from one of the kids long ago school projects. That stuff can cover just about everything, all you need is a bit of string to hold it in place.

Oh what fun!