Homemade Patterned Wrapping Paper

Homemade Wrapping Paper

Custom Wrapping Paper from an Illustrator Pattern

A friend’s child’s birthday was coming up and I needed an idea. I had an Adobe Illustrator repeating pattern I hadn’t done anything with, so I decided to make some homemade wrapping paper.

Repeating Pattern

Simple enough to do, I just made a 2′ x 4′ file in Illustrator and filled it with the repeating pattern. Then, I sent it off to my local Staples to print. Not print like a poster print, but you can get them to do engineering prints, stuff like you see in blueprints or layouts, that sort of thing. It’s simple black and white and lesser quality, but it’s fine for this purpose. And the best part is it’s cents per square foot instead of dollars. I’m pretty sure it’s also waterproof I think so in theory I could have painted or dyed the paper. Perhaps next time if I’d had more time.

I suppose if this was some kind of ‘How-To’ blog post, I should offer the pattern you could use to make it yourself. I’m not going to do that. I worked pretty hard on that pattern and I don’t want to just give it away. Besides, anyone can make a pattern, wouldn’t it be cooler if you made your own, one that’s special to you? Try it. Maybe in the future I’ll share it, or other patterns, but for now you’ll have to make your own. Or use one of the many Illustrator (or the web) provides.

Adding a Bow

Anyway, got it printed, brought it home and wrapped the present and thought it needed something more. So, I printed the same pattern onto colour stock letter-sized sheets. From there it was off to the web to find a suitable origami tutorial and I was off to the races. I found helenmade.blogspot.ca and it was perfect: http://helenmade.blogspot.ca/2011/08/paper-bow-tutorial.html.

I’m quite happy with how it turned out. The package is definitely better than the gift. Maybe if I try it again I’ll try soaking the patterned paper in some water with paints dripped in it, or food colouring. Something to making it a little more exciting than white, but I think it works okay here. I think without the cool bow instructions from helenmade, it probably wouldn’t be nearly as exciting…

Repeating Pattern in Red

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