Tutorial: Toilet roll giftwrap

I can’t think of anything more ugly and boring than an empty toilet paper roll. But, as with everything else, they too have potential and in this tutorial I’m going to show you how you easily can turn them into beautiful gift boxes.

 What you need:

Toilet roll(s)
Napkin
Glue (liquid, not glue stick)
Something to punch a hole with.
Sticky tape

1: Put glue on the toilet roll with a paint brush. You need to put on quite a lot because the toilet roll is very porous and soaks it up quite a bit. (But if you put on to much the napkin will tear very easily and you might have to throw it away.)

2: Time to wrap the napkin around the roll. I cut the napkin into 4 pieces and threw away the back layers. I lay the napkin on the floor/table and put the roll on top. Then I carefully wrap it around dabbing it with my finger. Small tears in the napkin is not a problem as they will camouflage them self.

Then I put a second coat of glue on top, befor cutting away the excess on top and bottom.

Now it needs time to dry. This is not for people as impatient as me. Because of the amount of glue it takes quite some time. I was planning on decorating the box with a magazine bow to finish it off so I used my waiting time to make a few bows. But when the box was finished they were too big so I’m saving them for my next recycling gift wrap project.

3: When it’s dry you bend the ends against each other so that they slightly overlap and secure them with a little tape. Then turn around, put your gift inside, bend and tape.

4: Getting close to Christmas there is a high risk of you needing to ad a to/from tag on the box. So I used my pliers to punch a hole, pulled a ribbon trough and attached the tag.)

Just to see the difference I made an identical one except I painted the background white before gluing on the napkin. There is a difference, but I'm not sure if it is for the better, so I wont be wasting my time on that step again.
But what I will be doing again is making to/from tags out of puzzle pieces. If I decorate them with Christmas motifs they can be used as ornaments when they are finished being a tag .