Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Yesterday was a great day because I got to wrap all of Bill's presents in the living room in front of the tree, watching my favorite Christmas movie (well, OK, my favorite movie, period.) Can you guess what it is? Do you remember from the list I posted earlier this year? OK,OK, I'll tell you. It's Die Hard! Yup, the original Die Hard where super good looking terrorists take over the Nakatomi Building in LA. on Christmas Eve. As far as I'm concerned that makes it a Christmas Movie and I watch it every year as I wrap presents. Fun! I mean, nothing says Merry Christmas like Bruce Willis running around bare chested yelling "Yippy Kaye . . . . ", right? I know, I'm weird. For whatever it's worth, I love It's a Wonderful Life too!

Anyway, I love wrapping presents because I love wrapping paper. Yes, the pre-printed kind. I know as a stamper I'm supposed to be making my own, but some of the pre-printed papers are just so gorgeous I cannot resist! And nothing makes me happier than getting to the end of a wrapping paper roll, because it means I can start on another one. So you can imagine how happy I was yesterday when I finished not one but two rolls of paper! Woo Hoo!

Of course this did leave me with two rolls, but in our house no wrapping roll is ever wasted. Many of them are eaten by our bunny, Stew. Don't worry -- it's vet approved. The extra fiber is actually good for his digestive tract. Go figure! But even Stew can't eat as many rolls as we generate, especially since the whole extended family saves their tubes for him as well, so tonight I experimented with another way we could re-use these tubes instead of adding them to the landfill.

The idea is actually one I saw on page 75 of the new spring/summer Stampin' Up! catalog. In the catalog they use a tube made out of card stock, but I thought these wrapping paper tubes would be sturdier.

The first thing I did was to cut the tube to 4" lengths using my hobby blade and the cutting mat. Always be very careful when using the hobby blade as it is extremely sharp!

I then measure the circumference of the tube and cut a piece of dashing designer paper to 6" by the circumference + 1/4" for an overlap which, in this case, was 6.25". (Keep in mind that the tubes may have different diameters, so be sure to measure yours!) I attached the designer paper to the tube using sticky strip and added another piece of sticky strip to hold the other end of the paper.

After the tube was wrapped, I pushed the 1" overhang into the tube on each side. This should be a pretty snug fit, so I didn't use any adhesive on the inside of the tube.

I added a 1.5" strip of old olive card stock stamped with the holly image from background basics as a bit of decoration.

I then attached a tag from Perfect presentation to the tube using some real red grosgrain ribbon.

I stamped a piece of white tissue paper with the same holly stamp from background basics in old olive. This took a bit of time, so I would actually recommend using a wheel instead.

I flipped the tissue paper over and added some chocolate kisses to the center, then rolled the tissue into a tube.

I used real red narrow grosgrain to secure the ends so that the tissue took on a candy shape. I then inserted the "candy" into the decorated tube and fanned out the ends of the tissue until I had the look that I wanted.

And voila -- here is a fun little party favor. This one is for Christmas, but all you need to do is change the stamps and designer paper and you would have an ideal Valentine's day project or a birthday party favor. Cute and Fun!