Homemade Wrapping Paper – happy hooligans

Here’s a creative way to wrap a gift! Have the kids make homemade wrapping paper with a little paint and a hair dryer! This colourful DIY gift-wrap is perfect for Christmas or Birthdays or any old time you need to wrap a gift.

Sometimes making the wrapping paper for a gift can be as much fun as giving the gift itself! Making your own wrapping paper is a great way to save money on gift-wrap too. And when the kids make the wrapping paper, it makes a present all the more special. Believe it or not, the process we’ve used to make our homemade wrapping paper today was a happy accident.

On the craft table, there was some watered down paint, and I just happened to be using the hairdryer to speed up the drying process on a project we were working on.  At one point, I accidentally turned the hairdryer on the spilled paint, and it made the coolest design all over the table top. Bingo. I had a lightbulb moment.

I’d actually been meaning to have the hooligans make some wrapping paper for Christmas, but I hadn’t decided exactly how they  would do it.  This seemed like the perfect process for the project.

Choose colours to suit the occasion:

This art process is super-easy, and you can change up the colours of paint that you use to suit any occasion.  We haven’t used traditional Christmas colours for this wrapping paper, but you certainly can. We chose to use modern, funky colours for our Christmas paper. I’m seeing these colours used more and more for Christmas decor, and I love them.

Here’s what you’ll need to make your homemade wrapping paper:

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The paint process:

Thin your paint with a bit of water and drip, splatter and dribble it all over your page.  We used our paint brushes to help with this part, dipping into the paints and splashing it out on to the page.  Likewise, pour the paint, drizzling it all over your paper.

You’ll want to work fairly quickly here so the paper doesn’t absorb a lot of the paint and water.

Now hand the hairdryer over to your child, and have them blow the paint all over the paper.  You can tape the paper in place on your table to prevent it from blowing away, or you can hold it in place while your child blasts it.

In a matter of seconds,you’ll have something that looks like this:

Hold the dryer to the paper until it’s completely dry, and in under a minute, you’ll have a personal piece of kid-made gift wrap.

Want to see what we wrapped up?

We wrapped the fridge magnets that the toddlers painted for their parents. They’re really gorgeous. Seriously.

More Cool Ways to Wrap a Gift:

Making Homemade Wrapping Paper with Coloured Ice Pops

Gorgeous Brown Paper Gift Wrap

How to Wrap a Gift in a Tin Can