Green Gift Wrap - Magazine Flowers

In effort to save money but still accomplish the things I want to, I have been digging around the house and have been amazed at what I have found. My hair was out of control and in desperate need of coloring. I dug through my old hair supplies from when I was in the salon and found a few tubes of color that I liked and worked well enough for a touch up. It is payday today, which means that my fridge is close to empty. So for lunch I scrounged around the pantry and found a half a bag of pasta. In the fridge I had four different kinds of shredded cheese and went with homemade made mac and cheese with sun dried tomato chicken sausage tossed in. Lainey and I devoured it!

Yesterday my husband and I got together with our friends to meet their new handsome baby boy. I had a little gift for him, but lacked any baby boy appropriate gift wrap. After wrapping the gift in green tissue paper, I wanted something fun for on top. I remembered a gift I had to wrap for a white elephant exchange my husband participated in. The rules were that no part of the gift, even the wrapping could be bought. So I wrapped his gift in magazine pages. It was around the time I had been making tissue puffs for my daughter's birthday and had the idea to make half a puff out of magazine pages and put it as a flower on top. I had seen my friend, Jesi Haack, make something similar with newspaper as a "floral" centerpiece.

This is what I came up with and thought it added some fun color and interest while utilizing all those magazines that are laying around my house.

I wanted to keep with the green theme. I pulled (just rip them out, the edges don't have to be perfect) six advertisements that were bold in color from various magazines. I would recommend pulling five to six pages for this type of project.

 Just because it has a toilet on it doesn't mean it can't be used. Keep in mind what is on the other side of the page too. Ideally both sides would be colorful so that you don't get too much white in your flower.

Stack the six pages and then begin a one inch accordion fold down the length of the magazine page. 

After the pages have been folded, secure the middle with a ribbon or string. You can try to use a staple, but I found the magazine pages tend to be too thick for a staple. 

Cut the ends with a rounded edge. You can also cut the ends to a point to for a different looking "flower."

Starting with the top magazine page, gently pull each side towards the center. Fan out the folds as wide as possible to make pulling the page easier and allowing more of the page to be pulled out from in between the folds. Continue to pull each layer, one at a time, towards the center. 

After pulling each layer you should have a little flower to put on top of your package. Feel free to "fluff" your flower if there are places that look sparse. Be gentle because magazine pages rip really easily. 

Tie your creation to the top of the package for a fun look that adds color and texture while clearing out your magazine rack!